The fastest way to slow a website project down is to start it before you’re ready. Almost every delay we’ve seen comes down to one missing login or one undecided question.
Here’s what to have ready before any website project starts, whether you work with us or anyone else. Most of it takes an afternoon to pull together, and doing it up front means the time you’re paying for goes into building your site rather than chasing passwords.
Why preparation matters more than you’d think
A website project is a chain of small decisions, and each one depends on the one before it. The designer can’t finalise the layout until they know which pages you need, the copy can’t be written until they know what you sell, and the site can’t go live until someone can point your domain at it.
When one link in that chain is missing, everything behind it waits. On a traditional project that runs for months, a week lost to a missing login might go unnoticed. On a fixed timeline, it’s the difference between launching on schedule and not. If you’re wondering how long a project should reasonably take, our guide on how long a website should take covers the typical timelines and what stretches them out.
The good news is that almost everything on this list is something you already have. You just need to find it before the project starts, not halfway through.
Access
- Domain registrar login (where you bought your domain, such as GoDaddy, Crazy Domains, Namecheap and so on), or the name of the person who has it
- Current website login, if you want content moved across
- Google Search Console and Google Analytics access, if you have them
- Booking, CRM or newsletter tool logins, if the site needs to connect to them
Tip: if you don’t know who controls your domain, find out now. It’s the most common thing that holds up a launch.
It’s very common for a domain to have been registered years ago by a former staff member, a nephew who was good with computers, or a previous web designer who has since moved on. If that’s you, start the recovery process with your registrar straight away, because proving ownership can take several days. You’ll usually need your ABN, the email address the domain was registered with, and some patience.
If your current site already ranks well in Google, access to Search Console matters more than you might expect. It shows which pages bring in visitors, which helps your new site keep those pages and redirect the old addresses properly. Our guide to redesigning without losing your Google rankings explains why this step is worth the effort.
Brand
- Your logo in the best format you have (SVG or a large PNG)
- Brand colours and fonts, if you have guidelines
- Photos of your team, premises and work (even phone photos help)
If you only have your logo as a small image pulled from your old website or an email signature, ask whoever designed it for the original files. An SVG or a high-resolution PNG with a transparent background will look sharp on every screen, while a small, blurry logo undermines everything around it.
Photos deserve more attention than most people give them. Real photos of you, your team and your work do more for trust than any stock image, and they don’t need to be professional. A recent phone with good daylight is plenty. If you have a few spare minutes before the project starts, take photos of your workspace, your team at work and a handful of finished jobs, and put them all in one shared folder.
Content
- A list of your services, roughly in order of importance
- Three websites you like (in any industry) and one sentence on why
- Any existing copy, brochures or proposals that describe what you do well
- Reviews or client feedback you’re allowed to use
- Industry rules you need to follow (for example, health practitioner advertising guidelines or legal practice rules)
Your list of services is the backbone of the site, because each important service usually deserves its own page. Put them in order of what you’d most like more of, not simply what you do most often. If you’re unsure which pages you need, start with a home page, a page for each main service, an about page and a contact page, and build out from there.
The three websites you like don’t have to be in your industry. You might like one because it feels calm and uncluttered, another because its pricing is easy to understand, and a third because the photos make you want to call. That one sentence on why is the most useful part, because it tells your designer what you value rather than what you want copied.
When it comes to reviews, only use feedback you have permission to publish, and keep the client’s wording intact. If your reviews live on Google, a link to your Google Business Profile is usually enough. If you work in a regulated field such as health, law or finance, check your advertising rules before the project starts. Some professions restrict testimonials entirely, and it’s much easier to plan around that than to rewrite pages later.
Decisions
- Who approves the copy and design, ideally one person
- What a good enquiry looks like: who you want more of, and who you want fewer of
- Where enquiries should go: which inbox, or which system
These three decisions often take longer than gathering files, because they involve people rather than paperwork.
Having one person approve the work keeps feedback clear. If three business partners each send separate notes, your web team has to guess which ones win. It’s far better for the partners to talk it through and send one consolidated set of changes.
Thinking about what a good enquiry looks like changes the way your site is written. If you want more commercial clients and fewer small residential jobs, the copy, the examples and even the contact form can steer people accordingly. If you’d like to discourage enquiries below a certain budget, you can say so politely on the site.
Finally, decide where enquiries go before launch, not after. A contact form that sends to an inbox nobody checks is worse than no form at all. If you use a CRM or booking system, make sure someone knows how new enquiries arrive and who follows them up.
Common mistakes to avoid
A few problems come up again and again, and they’re all easy to avoid if you know about them in advance.
The first is waiting for perfect photos. If you plan to organise a professional shoot, that’s great, but launch with the good photos you have and swap in the new ones later. Holding a whole project for a photographer’s calendar rarely makes sense.
The second is rewriting everything from scratch before the project starts. You don’t need finished copy. Rough notes, voice memos or an old brochure give a copywriter more to work with than a blank page, and they save you hours.
The third is going quiet during review. When your draft copy or preview site arrives, set aside time that day to read it properly. Feedback that arrives promptly and all at once keeps a project moving far better than comments trickling in over a fortnight.
The last is forgetting about budget and ongoing costs until the end. Know what you’re comfortable spending on the build and on hosting and support afterwards. Our guide to what a small business website costs sets out the typical ranges so you can plan with confidence.
With us, that’s all you need
For a S7UDIO SEVEN build, this list is the intake. You cover it in a 15-minute online brief, with no calls, and your build starts on a Monday. You approve your copy on Day 3, your site is live for review the following Monday, and you have two rounds of revisions to get it right. From there it’s seven days to a live site, and if you’re in a hurry, there’s a 48-hour option too.
If you’ve got most of this checklist together already, you’re ready to start your brief.
Frequently asked questions
What if I can’t find my domain login?
Start by searching your email for the name of common registrars or the word “renewal”, because renewal notices usually reveal where the domain is held. If you still can’t find it, contact the registrar directly with your business details and ask them to help you recover the account. Do this as early as possible, because it can take a few days.
Do I need all of my copy written before the project starts?
No, you don’t. You need to know what you do, who you do it for and what makes you different, but the words themselves can be rough. A good web team will turn your notes into clear, finished copy for you to approve.
Can my website project start if I don’t have professional photos yet?
Yes, it can. Good phone photos of your real team and work are often more convincing than stock images, and you can replace them with professional shots once you have them.
