Most website projects don't stall on code. They stall waiting for a logo file, or for someone to decide what the homepage is actually for. An hour of preparation before you send that first email genuinely shortens the build and often shrinks the quote too, because a developer who can see the whole job doesn't have to price the parts they can't see.
1. Know your goal
Every site does one thing best. Before anything else, finish this sentence: this site is working if a visitor ______.
- Books a call or asks for a quote. The site is a lead engine, and every page should funnel toward one form.
- Buys something. You need products, a cart, and a checkout — and the budget conversation is a different one.
- Turns up in person. Hours, address, parking, and a map matter more than clever copy ever will.
- Takes you seriously. You're buying credibility, which means real work, real people, and real detail rather than stock photography.
"All of them" is the answer that costs money. Pick the one that pays the bills and let the rest be secondary — you can always add later, and a site that tries to do four jobs at once usually does none of them well.
2. Gather your content
This is the one that delays projects. Not occasionally — reliably. Design and build move quickly; waiting three weeks for the text of an About page does not.
- Your logo as an actual vector file (.svg or .ai), not a PNG pulled off your old site at 400px wide.
- Photos at full resolution — team, premises, products, finished work. Phone photos in good light beat stock images every time.
- A rough paragraph for each page you think you need. Rough genuinely is fine. Blank is not.
- Business basics: legal name, address, hours, phone, email, service areas, and any license or registration numbers you need to display.
- Logins for your domain and current hosting — or at minimum, knowing who has them. This one surprises people at the worst moment.
You don't need polished copy — a good developer will tighten what you write, or quote you for someone who does it properly. What you need is for the raw material to exist somewhere other than your head.
3. Collect examples you like
Two or three links, with one line each about what you like. That's the whole task. "I like this site" is hard to act on; "I like how calm this feels" or "I like that the prices are right there instead of hidden behind a form" is immediately useful. Screenshots with arrows scribbled on them work just as well.
Send one site you dislike as well, and say why. Knowing what to avoid usually saves a full revision round. Competitors are worth including, but don't restrict yourself to your own industry — the layout that fits your business might be sitting on a restaurant site.
4. Know your must-haves vs nice-to-haves
Write two lists, and be strict about which column things land in. Must-haves are the things that break the site's job if they're missing: a contact form, working properly on a phone, your services and prices, a clear way to find you.
Nice-to-haves are real but survivable — a blog, a booking calendar, live chat, a testimonials carousel, an events page. They're also, reliably, the things that quietly double a quote.
The useful part is that a nice-to-have isn't a no. It's a phase two. Launching in three weeks with the must-haves and adding a blog in month two beats launching in month four with everything, because the three-week version starts earning while the other one is still in review.
5. Have a rough budget and timeline in mind
Naming a number doesn't get you charged more. It gets you the right recommendation. A developer who knows you have $800 and a launch in three weeks will tell you to do a landing page properly rather than a full site badly. Without a number they're guessing, and a guess means a proposal that's wrong in one direction or the other, plus another week of email to fix it.
If you're not sure what your project should cost, landing page vs full website covers which shape actually fits, and the services page lists what sits inside each tier.
Timelines work the same way. A real date — "before the trade show on 12 October" — is far more useful than "as soon as possible," because it tells a developer what to cut if the calendar gets tight.
Have all five and your first email can be four lines long, and you'll get a real quote back instead of an invitation to a discovery call. Don't have all five? Most people don't, and that's genuinely fine — our contact form has a "Not sure yet — help me choose" option for project type and a "Not set yet" option for budget, and they exist because a good share of the best projects start exactly there. Tell us what you're trying to do and we'll work out the rest with you.