What to prepare before work on your website starts

In recent years I have not had a single project that was delayed by programming. Every project that ran late ran late because of content — texts, photos, access details, decisions. This is a list of things that will cut weeks off your project if you prepare them in advance.

Decide what the website is supposed to do

Not “present the company”. That is not a task, that is a description. A website has to do something measurable: bring in an enquiry through a form, bring in a phone call, get someone into the shop, take an order, save you answering the same question twenty times a month.

Write one sentence: “The website is a success if ______.” If you cannot finish it, you are not ready for design, and no amount of visual work will save it.

Write down who will come to the site

Usually it is not one group. At the petrol station I worked on there were three — a driver looking for opening hours, a business customer dealing with a fuel card, and someone who came in for a coffee. Each of them needs a different first screen.

Write down two to four groups and one sentence for each: what they are looking for and what will put them off. This will decide the structure of the site more than anything else.

Texts

This is the biggest time sink. You do not need the final wording, but you do need the raw material. Specifically:

• What the company does, said the way you would say it to a friend in the pub — not the way it reads in the companies register
• How you differ from the competition, concretely. “Quality and reliability” is not a difference, everybody claims that
• A list of services or products with a short description of each
• The questions you get most often over the phone — with the answers
• References: client names you are allowed to publish, and ideally quotes as well
• Contact details, opening hours, invoicing details for the footer

It does not have to be pretty. It only has to be true and complete. We will put it into shape together.

Photographs

Photographs decide the impression a website makes more than the design does. Stock photos are spotted instantly these days and they turn a company into an anonymous backdrop.

What to prepare: photos of the premises, the products, the people. If you do not have them, plan a shoot as a separate item in the project — and plan it before the design starts, not after. A design built on real photos is a different design from one that has photos dropped into it later.

Have your logo ready as a vector (SVG, AI or EPS). If all you have is a JPG from 2011, say so straight away — it can be redrawn, but it is extra work.

Access details

This is the boring part, and it is the one that most often blocks a launch. Find out in advance:

• Where the domain is registered and who has access to it
• Where the current hosting runs and what the login details are
• Who manages the email on the domain
• Whether Google Analytics and Search Console exist and who owns them

The classic situation: the domain was registered ten years ago by a former employee under his personal address and nobody is in touch with him any more. Sorting that out the day before launch is unpleasant. Sorting it out at the start is paperwork.

Appoint one person who decides

This is probably the most important point on the whole list. If comments come from five people and contradict each other, the project stops and nobody is to blame.

That person does not have to decide alone — let them gather opinions internally. But one voice with one decision should reach me.

Look at three websites you like

They do not have to be from your field; it is actually better if they are not. Write one sentence about each, saying what exactly you like about it — whether it is the clarity, the tone of the writing, the colours, or a sense of trust.

And feel free to add three you do not like. That tends to be even more useful.

Summary

If you do even the points about the goal, the audience and the texts, you will save yourself weeks of waiting and get a better website. Not because I will work faster, but because I will know from the start what I am building.