What to Have Ready Before You Hire a Web Designer

Nearly every website project that runs late runs late for the same reason. Not the design. Not the code. The content.

The designer finishes the layout in a few days, then sends an email asking for the About text, the service descriptions and some photos of the work. Three weeks pass. The owner is busy running a business, which is the entire reason they hired someone in the first place.

So here is what to have ready before you hire a web designer. Gather this first and the build is fast. Gather it afterwards and it is not.

1. The job the site has to do

One sentence. Not a mission statement.

"Get people to call for a quote." "Take bookings so I stop answering the phone during appointments." "Look established enough that commercial clients take me seriously." "Sell twelve products."

Everything else follows from this, and getting it wrong is the most expensive mistake available. A site built to take bookings looks different from a site built to win commercial contracts. If you cannot say it in a sentence, that is worth an hour of thinking before it is worth anyone's invoice.

2. Your words

You do not need to write finished copy. You do need to supply the raw material, because a designer inventing it produces something generic that sounds like every other site in your trade.

Have ready:

• What you do, in your own words, as you would say it on the phone.
• The list of services, each with two or three sentences.
• How you are different from the two competitors you lose work to. Be specific. "Quality and service" is not an answer.
• Your story, briefly. How long, why you started, what you did before.
• The questions customers always ask. Every one. These become your FAQ section, and they are the most useful thing you can hand over.
• Prices, or a decision about whether to show them.

Voice memos are fine. Talking is faster than writing and it sounds more like you.

3. Your photographs

The single biggest difference between a site that converts and one that does not is whether the pictures are real.

Your shop. Your van. Your team. Your finished work, before and after. Photographed on your phone in good light, which is usually outdoors on an overcast day or near a window.

Twenty real photos beat two hundred stock images. If you have none, say so early — a good designer will tell you exactly what to shoot, and it is usually an hour of your time.

Also have your logo in the highest quality file you can find. If the only copy you have is a JPEG pulled off Facebook, mention it now rather than at launch.

4. Your domain, and access to it

This is where projects get genuinely stuck.

Find out who registered your domain and where. GoDaddy, Namecheap, Google Domains, Wix, whoever. Then confirm you can log into that account yourself.

If a previous designer registered it for you, this is the moment to find out whether it is in your name — the registrant on record is the party with control, and transfers follow a published process (ICANN, "Transferring Your Domain Name" registrant guidance). Sometimes it is not, and sorting that out takes weeks. Better to discover it now than the day before launch. What to do if the domain is not in your name

If you have no domain at all, that is simpler. Have two or three names in mind.

5. Every login you can find

Make a list. You will need more of these than you expect:

Put them somewhere secure before the project starts. Hunting for a hosting password mid-launch is how a site goes down for a day.

6. Two or three sites you like, and why

Send links. More usefully, send a sentence with each explaining what you like — the layout, the colours, the way they explain their pricing, the photography.

"I like this one" tells a designer nothing. "I like how this one puts the phone number in the corner on every page" tells them everything.

Competitor sites are worth including too, including the ones you dislike. Knowing what you want to avoid is as useful as knowing what you want.

7. Your questions, asked before you sign

Five that matter more than the price:

1. Who actually builds it? Is the person quoting you the person doing the work?
2. What is the turnaround, and what happens if it slips? Get a number and a consequence.
3. What happens after launch? Who fixes it, how fast, and at what cost.
4. Who owns the domain, the hosting and the code? The answer should be you.
5. Will it be built to accessibility standards? Almost nobody asks. Why it is worth asking

And one for yourself: can you reach this person directly, or are you going through an account manager? For a small business, that difference shows up every time you need something changed.

What you do not need to have ready before hiring a web designer

Some relief.

You do not need to know what pages the site should have — that is the designer's job. You do not need colours picked, a written brief, a sitemap, or any technical decisions about hosting or platforms. You do not need professional photography for most local businesses. And you do not need everything perfect before you start, only gathered.

Frequently asked questions

What should I prepare before hiring a web designer? The job the site has to do in one sentence, your service descriptions and the questions customers always ask, real photographs of your work, your logo file, your domain and hosting logins, and two or three example sites you like with reasons.

How long does a small business website take to build? The build itself is usually days. Most projects take weeks because they are waiting on content from the owner. Having your text, photos and logins ready before you start is the single biggest thing you control.

Do I need to write the content for my website myself? Not the finished copy, but you should supply the raw material — what you do, how you describe it on the phone, and the questions customers ask. A designer writing from nothing produces generic text that sounds like every other site in your industry.

What questions should I ask a web designer before hiring them? Who actually builds it, what the turnaround is and what happens if it slips, what support looks like after launch and what it costs, who owns the domain and hosting, and whether the site will be built to accessibility standards.

What if I do not have a logo or any photos? Say so upfront. Logos can be designed as part of the project, and most local businesses can shoot everything they need on a phone in about an hour with a bit of direction.

Before you gather anything, check what you already have

If you have an existing site, run it through the free Website Health Report first. It will tell you in plain English what is working and what is not, which usually clarifies whether you need a rebuild or a repair.

Run a free Website Health Report

Then, when you are ready, tell me what your business does and what the site needs to accomplish. Request a free consultation · Or read who you would be working with