What to prepare before hiring a web designer

Start with one primary customer action

Write one sentence describing what the website needs to help a visitor do. “Request a quote for our commercial maintenance service” is more useful than “look modern”. It gives the designer a way to assess the navigation, page content and contact journey.

Then explain who that visitor is, what they need to know before contacting you and whether the business serves a local area, a whole country or several markets. UK and US visitors may share the same needs but require a clear currency and an agreed way to arrange conversations.

List services and essential pages

Create a short list of your services, with the most important ones first. Group closely related services where that helps understanding. Avoid requesting a page for every nearby town unless you have genuinely useful, distinct local information.

For each proposed page, note the customer question it answers, the facts it needs and the next action. Include about, contact and policy information. If the current website has useful pages, include their URLs so the replacement can retain them or redirect them properly.

Gather approved text and photographs

• Business name, contact details, opening hours and genuine service areas.
• A plain-English description of each service and any eligibility or scope limits.
• Your logo files and existing brand colours, if you have them.
• Photographs you own or have permission to use, ideally in original resolution.
• Reviews you have permission to publish, with accurate attribution.
• Team information, credentials and project details that can be verified.

Tell the designer what is missing. Copy editing, writing new pages, photography and illustration are different pieces of work. Our packages include a defined allowance to polish supplied copy; full copywriting and photography are separately scoped.

Identify the tools and access involved

List booking services, payment providers, CRM tools, email delivery and anything else that needs to connect. Include the account owner and whether the subscription is already active. A simple embed can be very different from a custom API connection.

Check who controls your domain and hosting before the launch date. Share access through the agreed secure method once the work is commissioned. Keep passwords, customer records and payment details out of the enquiry form.

Agree who reviews the work

Choose one person to collect feedback and approve business facts. Consolidated feedback prevents contradictory changes and makes the revision allowance easier to use. Decide when this person can review the preview.

Our standard builds take 3–7, 7–10 or 10–14 calendar days from the agreed start, depending on the package, with content and access ready. This is a build schedule, not a promise that missing photography or an unresolved integration can be completed within it. Tell us about a fixed event date before agreeing the scope.

A brief you can copy

A rough first version is enough to start. Tell me what you have in mind, and we can clarify the scope together.