What to get ready before hiring a web designer
A checklist you can work through in an afternoon. It is the difference between a website that takes three days and one that takes three months.
Get your text, your photos and your contact details together before you hire anyone. Almost every website that runs late runs late for that reason, and no designer can fix it from their end.
Work through the list below and you can hand it over in one go. It takes an afternoon.
Why this is the whole game
Designers do not usually stall on design. They stall waiting for you.
The pattern is always the same: the build starts, it gets to the point where real content is needed, a request goes out for the text and the photos, and then two weeks pass. Then another two, because by then you are busy and it has slipped down your list. Nobody is at fault, and the project takes three months anyway.
We say three working days for a build, and the honest asterisk is from the point we have your content. Send everything on day one and you are live on day three. Send it in pieces over a month and the build takes a month.
The checklist
About the business
- What you do, in one or two plain sentences. Write it as if explaining to a neighbour, not to your industry.
- Who your customers are. Homeowners, other businesses, a particular area.
- The area you cover, if you travel to customers.
- How long you have been going, if it is something you want to say.
- Anything you are accredited, licensed or insured for. These reassure people more than you expect.
Your services or products
- A list of what you offer. All of it, even the small things.
- Which one earns you the most. It should get the most space.
- Prices, or how pricing works. A range or a starting figure is enough. If you genuinely cannot publish prices, decide what you can say — "typically" figures, or what a call will cover.
- Anything you do not do. Saves you calls you did not want.
Photos
The single biggest quality difference between a good site and a mediocre one.
- Ten to twenty photos of real work, your premises, your team, your products. More than you think you need — most get discarded.
- Shot on a phone is fine. In good light, preferably daylight, horizontal. Real beats polished.
- Anything you have permission to use. If a customer's home or business is in the photo, check first.
- Avoid stock photography. People recognise it and it quietly signals that there was nothing real to show.
Words from customers
- Two to five comments from real customers, with a first name and ideally a business or a town.
- Permission to use them. An email or a message is enough.
- Reviews already left publicly are usually fair to quote — check the platform's rules.
Contact details
- Phone number, exactly as you want it displayed.
- Email address for enquiries.
- Address, or the area you serve if you have no premises.
- Opening hours, including how you handle holidays if it matters.
- Social profiles you actually maintain. Leave off the ones you do not.
Brand
- Your logo, in the best quality you have. The original file if you can find it — vector or high-resolution, not a screenshot from a business card.
- Your colours, if you have them.
- Two or three websites you like, with a note on what you like about each. This is more useful than any adjective; "clean and modern" means nothing, but a link to a specific site means everything.
The technical bits
- Do you already own a domain? If so, find the login for wherever you bought it. This is the item people most often cannot locate.
- Is there an existing website? Note anything worth keeping.
- Do you have a Google Business Profile? If not, it is worth setting up — it is what answers "near me" searches, and a website alone will not.
One thing worth deciding early
Who is going to approve it? Websites slow to a crawl when three people have opinions and none of them has the final word. Pick one person. If that person is you, say so.
Then you are ready
If you have that list assembled, any designer can start immediately, and you will have a much better site — because the quality of the result depends far more on the quality of the material than on who builds it.
Once you have it, ours takes three working days and costs $499 to build, then $49 a month. Bring your afternoon's work and we will do the rest.