Before you hire anyone, get clear on why you need the site, decide who is writing the content, gather your logo, brand colors and photos, and find your domain and hosting logins. Those four things set most of the timeline and a fair amount of the cost.
Four things decide most of what a website project will cost you in time and money, and all four get settled before design starts. You need a clear reason for building the site, a decision about who writes the content, your brand material in hand and access to your own domain and hosting.
None of this requires you to know anything technical. It is the material any competent designer will ask for in the first week, and having it ready is the cheapest thing you can do for your own budget.
Start with why you are building it
The first question we ask is why. A specific reason, something like wanting more sales calls or needing an online presence so more people know the business exists, becomes the basis for every design and functionality decision that follows.
That sounds soft and it is the most useful item on this page. "Make it look better" cannot settle an argument about whether the phone number belongs at the top of every page. "We want more calls from people searching for us" settles it immediately. Write down one sentence about what the site is for and one about how you will know it worked.
Decide who writes the content
Content is the most common reason website projects stall. We can lay out pages around placeholder text for a while, but nothing gets finished until the real words exist, and every week of ambiguity about who is writing them is a week the project waits.
You have three workable options. You can write it yourself, and we will give you content prompts so you are not staring at an empty page. We can bring in one of the local content writers we partner with. Or you can start from what already exists, because an old brochure, your sales emails or the way you explain the business on the phone is usually a better starting point than people expect.
What does not work is assuming it will get handled later.
Gather your brand material
Send whatever exists, in the highest resolution you have. That means logo files, ideally the vector versions from whoever designed them rather than a screenshot pulled off your current site. It means your colors and fonts if they have been defined, and if they have not, that is a decision worth making early because everything visual depends on it.
Photos matter more than most people expect. Real pictures of your team, your work, your space or your products beat stock photography every time for a local business, and if you do not have them, either budget for a photographer or decide deliberately to use stock.
It also helps to send three sites you admire and one you cannot stand. That tells us more in five minutes than a page of adjectives.
Find your accounts before you need them
This causes more delays than it should, because the answers often live with someone who left the company years ago.
We will need to know who controls your domain registrar and who can log in. If the domain is registered to a former employee or an agency you have parted ways with, sorting that out early avoids a genuinely painful week later. We will also need access to your current hosting if you have a site today, and to your analytics if it is installed, so you do not lose your history. Then we will ask about anything the site connects to, whether that is email marketing, booking, payments or a CRM, since knowing which accounts exist speeds up the work of wiring them together.
Know what the site has to do
There is a real difference between a site that presents information and a site that does things. Booking appointments, taking payments, putting content behind a login or syncing with a system you already run all add design, build and testing time.
Make two lists before you talk to anyone. The first is what the first version has to do. The second is everything that can wait. That second list is what keeps a project on budget, and nothing on it gets thrown away, it simply ships later.
Understand the shape of the project
Wireframes come before design. A wireframe details how someone moves from point A to point B using simplified screens, and it is far cheaper to move a box on a wireframe than to redesign a finished page. Expect to react to something plain looking early on, and do not panic when it is not pretty yet.
Timelines run from two weeks to six months depending on size and complexity, and how ready your content is drives much of that. On budget, most website projects we build land between $7,000 and $15,000, with a range of about $5,000 to $35,000 depending on how custom the design is, how many pages there are and what the site has to do.
Decide who decides
Pick one person who can approve design and content. Feedback from a committee takes longer to reconcile than the work takes to produce, and a project with four opinions and no decision maker will drift for weeks. Everyone can have input, and one person signs off.
Plan for after launch
Decide who will update the site, because if that is you, it changes which platform we recommend. Decide who keeps it running, meaning hosting, backups, security patching and plugin updates if you end up on WordPress. We offer hosting through the platform of your choice with monthly maintenance and security upkeep, and settling that before launch is easier than sorting it out the first time something breaks.
It is also worth agreeing on what you will look at three months after launch. Calls, form submissions, quote requests or bookings, whichever one or two matter to your business. That settles arguments later, because a site producing inquiries makes minor design complaints far less urgent, and a site producing nothing gives us something concrete to work on.
The short list you can forward
If it is easier to hand this off to someone on your team, here is the whole thing in one place.
- One sentence on why the site exists, and one on how you will know it worked
- Who is writing the content, and when it will be ready
- Logo files, brand colors and fonts, in the highest resolution available
- Photos of your team, work, space or products
- Three sites you like and one you do not
- Login access for your domain registrar, current host and analytics
- A list of tools the site needs to connect to
- What the first version must do, and what can wait
- One person who can approve design and content
What you do not need to figure out yet
People delay starting because they think they need answers they do not. You do not need to know how many pages the site will have, since that comes out of the first conversation about what it is for. You do not need to choose a platform, because WordPress or a custom build is a decision we make together based on who is updating the site and what it has to do. You do not need finished copy for every page, only a decision about who is writing it. You do not need to understand any technical terms, and if someone makes you feel like you should, that is a problem with them rather than with you. You also do not need a budget accurate to the dollar, because a range is enough to tell whether we are a fit.