What to Prepare Before a Web Designer Builds Your Site

Pick the one main action you want visitors to take:

• Call you
• Book an appointment / request a quote
• Order online
• Visit your location

Everything else on the site supports that. Tell your designer which one, and why.

Describe your best-fit customer in a couple of sentences. Then list what makes them hesitate before hiring: price, quality, speed, trust, disruption, communication. Your site needs to answer those worries, so your designer needs to know them.

This is the big one. Gather:

• A list of your services — with a few sentences on each: what's included, roughly what it costs, how long it takes.
• Your story — a short paragraph: who you are, how long you've been going, credentials, what you care about.
• Photos — of your team, your premises, your work (before/after is gold), and yourself. Real photos beat stock every time. Get them off your phone at full resolution.
• Testimonials — 3 to 6 real quotes with the customer's name and town. Screenshots of Google reviews are fine.
• Your contact details — the exact phone number, email, address, service area, and opening hours you want shown.

If writing the copy feels daunting, that's fine — a good designer can write from bullet points. But the facts (services, prices, hours, story) have to come from you.

A folder with:

• Your logo file — the original, ideally a vector (.ai, .svg, .eps) or at least a high-res PNG with a transparent background.
• Your colours — two or three hex codes if you know them, or point at something that has them.
• Any fonts you use on printed material.

No logo? Say so — many web projects include a simple wordmark, or you can start with clean type and add a logo later.

They don't have to be in your industry. Beside each link, write one line about what specifically you like: "the way the reviews sit right next to the phone number", "how clean the services section is", "the colours". This tells a designer far more than "make it modern".

Add one or two you dislike, with why. Just as useful.

List anything the site needs to do, including the obvious:

• Contact form (what fields?)
• Online booking or a booking-tool link
• Embedded map
• Photo gallery
• Newsletter signup
• Online payments / shop
• Multiple languages

Every "oh, and can it also..." after the quote is where budgets and timelines slip.

Answer these:

• Do you own a domain name? Where did you buy it, and can you log in?
• Do you have hosting, or do you need it set up?
• Do you use a custom email address (you@yourbusiness.com)? Who runs it?
• Is there an existing website? Who built it, who hosts it, and do you have access?
• Do you have a Google Business Profile? Is it verified and in your control?

"I don't know" is a fine answer — but flag it, because sorting out access to a domain someone else registered years ago can take longer than the build.

Have a real number in mind, and share it. A designer can build very different things for £500 and £5,000; telling them your budget gets you the right proposal instead of three rounds of "that's more than I wanted to spend". Same with timeline — is there an event, a season, a launch you're working towards?