To get a website built quickly, your designer will need your business details, services, contact information, branding, images and access to your domain. You will also need a clear idea of what the website should achieve and be available to provide fast feedback.
Everything doesn’t need to be perfectly written or organised before you begin. However, gathering the essential information in advance can turn a project that takes several weeks into one that is completed within days.
What information does a web designer need?
Your web designer needs enough information to understand the business from a potential customer’s perspective.
Start with the basics:
- Business name
- Telephone number
- Email address
- Business address, if customers visit you
- Locations or areas covered
- Opening hours
- Social media profiles
- Main contact methods
- Companies House details, if applicable
- Any professional registrations or accreditations
Check these details carefully. Small errors are easy to miss during a fast build, particularly when different telephone numbers or addresses appear across old documents and social media accounts.
Sending one confirmed set of details helps avoid confusion.
Do I need to write all of the website content?
That depends on what your designer includes.
Some designers expect complete, ready-to-use text for every page. Others can organise, edit or write the content using information you provide.
If you are supplying the text yourself, prepare a separate document for each page. Clearly label the headings and avoid sending important information across a long chain of emails, messages and attachments.
If writing isn’t your strong point, don’t let it stop the entire project. Useful source material might include:
- Existing brochures
- Social media profiles
- Service lists
- Previous proposals
- Customer emails
- Printed leaflets
- Notes or bullet points
- An existing website
- Frequently asked questions
A web designer can often turn rough but accurate information into properly structured website content.
They cannot, however, invent the important facts about your business. You still need to explain what you do, who you help and why customers choose you.
What should I provide for each service?
For every service you want to promote, try to answer:
- What is the service?
- Who is it for?
- What problem does it solve?
- What is included?
- How does the process work?
- How long does it normally take?
- Where is it available?
- What should someone do next?
- What questions do customers usually ask?
You don’t need to write polished paragraphs. Straightforward answers give the designer enough material to create useful content.
Avoid relying entirely on industry terminology. Your customers may describe the service differently or may not know exactly what they need yet.
What images will I need for a new website?
Ideally, provide a selection of clear, high-quality photographs showing the business, team, work, products or location.
The most useful images often include:
- You or your team at work
- Completed projects
- Your premises
- Products or equipment
- Before-and-after examples
- Behind-the-scenes photographs
- Professional headshots
- Recognisable details from the business
Real photographs can make a small business feel more trustworthy and distinctive.
If professional photography isn’t available, good smartphone photographs may still be usable. Send the original files rather than screenshots or images downloaded from social media, as these are often smaller and lower quality.
Your designer may also use properly licensed stock photography where appropriate. Stock images work best when they support the real content rather than pretending to show your actual team, premises or completed work.
What branding should I send?
If you already have a brand identity, provide:
- Your logo
- Brand colours
- Font information
- Brand guidelines
- Different logo versions
- Any existing printed or digital materials
Vector logo files such as SVG, EPS or AI are particularly useful because they can be resized without becoming blurry. A large, transparent PNG is also helpful for website use.
If the only version of your logo is a tiny image copied from Facebook, tell the designer early. They may need to recreate, improve or work around it.
Don’t have established branding? That doesn’t necessarily prevent the website from going ahead. A designer can often create a clean, consistent visual style using an existing logo and a simple colour palette.
Do I need to choose websites I like?
Examples are helpful, but you don’t need to find a website you want to copy.
Send two or three examples and explain what you like about them. It might be:
- The colours
- Large photographs
- Simple navigation
- Clear service sections
- Bold typography
- Minimal design
- Overall atmosphere
It is equally useful to explain what you dislike.
“Make it modern” can mean something completely different to each person. Specific examples help your designer understand your taste without recreating another business’s website.
Do I need a domain before the website is built?
Not always, but you will need a domain before the website can launch publicly.
The domain is the website address, such as yourbusiness.co.uk. If you already own one, make sure you know:
- Which company it is registered with
- The account login details
- Who controls the account
- Whether business email uses the same domain
- When the domain renews
You should keep ownership of your domain and use an email address you control for the account.
If you need to purchase a new domain, your designer can advise on a suitable choice. Avoid buying numerous variations or adding unnecessary extras before checking what is actually required.
Why does my designer need access to the domain?
The domain must be connected to the website’s hosting before the new site can appear at your address.
Your designer may need to update DNS records or nameservers to make that connection.
These changes can also affect business email if they are handled incorrectly. Always tell the designer if you use domain-based email addresses such as hello@yourbusiness.co.uk, including who provides the email service.
A careful designer will check the existing records before making changes.
If you cannot access the domain account, begin recovering it as early as possible. Waiting for an old employee, previous developer or forgotten provider to release access can delay an otherwise completed website.
What other account details might be needed?
Depending on the website, you may need access to:
- Website hosting
- Existing WordPress admin
- Google Business Profile
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
- Online booking system
- Payment provider
- Email marketing platform
- Social media profiles
- Review platforms
- Third-party software being connected
Do not send passwords through an insecure public document.
Your designer may provide a secure way to share access or ask you to create a separate user account for them. Access can then be changed or removed after the project is complete.
Do I need testimonials and reviews?
Testimonials can help reassure visitors, particularly if the business is new or provides a high-value service.
Gather a few strong examples that explain what the customer needed and what they appreciated about working with you.
Short comments such as “Great service” are positive but don’t provide much detail. A useful testimonial might mention reliability, communication, quality, turnaround time or the result achieved.
Only use genuine reviews and obtain permission where necessary. If a review is already publicly displayed on a platform such as Google, your designer may be able to link to the original source.
Do I need policies before the website launches?
Most business websites require some legal and privacy information, although the exact requirements depend on what the website collects and sells.
You may need:
- Privacy policy
- Cookie policy
- Terms and conditions
- Delivery and returns information
- Cancellation policy
- Accessibility statement
- Professional or industry disclaimers
Your designer can explain where these pages should appear and what information the website collects, but they may not be qualified to provide legal advice or write policies tailored to your business.
Do not copy another company’s policies. Their business, data collection and legal obligations may be completely different from yours.
Who should approve the website?
Choose one person to collect feedback and give final approval wherever possible.
A fast project becomes difficult when several people send separate, conflicting requests. One person may ask for a section to be removed while another asks for it to be made more prominent.
If several stakeholders need to contribute, agree on the feedback internally and send one clear list to the designer.
Decide who has final authority before the build begins.
How quickly should I provide feedback?
For a fast-track website, feedback may be needed on the same day.
Your designer should tell you when the first version will be ready and when they need your response. Keep some time available to review it properly.
When giving feedback:
- Collect everything into one message or document
- Identify the page and section
- Explain what should change
- Provide replacement wording where required
- Separate essential corrections from personal preferences
- Check names, prices and contact details carefully
Several small batches of feedback can take longer to process than one organised review.
Does everything need to be ready before I contact a designer?
No.
You can contact a designer before gathering all of the materials. In fact, an early conversation can help you avoid collecting things you don’t need.
The important point is that essential content and access should be ready before the scheduled fast-track build begins.
Some clients arrive with a detailed brief and carefully labelled folders. Others arrive with a logo, some photographs and information scattered across several places.
Both can become professional websites. One may simply require a little more preparation first.
Your fast-track website checklist
Before the build begins, try to have:
- Confirmed business and contact details
- A list of required pages
- Information about every service
- Logo and brand materials
- Original image files
- Testimonials or project examples
- Domain account access
- Details of existing business email
- Access to any systems being connected
- Required policy information
- One person responsible for approval
- Time available to answer questions and review the site
If something is missing, tell your designer. It is much easier to plan around a gap than discover it shortly before launch.
Ready to get your website moving?
You don’t need a perfectly written brief or a colour-coded folder containing every possible asset.
Send us what you have. We’ll help identify what is usable, what is missing and what needs to be prepared before your build begins.
Once everything essential is ready, your new website could be designed, built and launched within days.