What to Send Your Web Designer: A 20-Minute Checklist

The fastest builds are not the ones with the best designers. They are the ones where the owner sent their material in one go, before anybody had to ask twice.

Here is the whole list. Most owners finish it in twenty minutes.

The three things people leave until last

• Your logo, as a file. Ask for the original from whoever made it: a PNG with a transparent background, an SVG or an AI/EPS if it exists. Not a screenshot, not a photo of a sign, not a JPEG on a white box.
• Photos. Five to fifteen is plenty. Phone photos are fine. Daylight, no flash, no filter, and people actually working. Add two or three photos of finished jobs, and one of something real about the business: the truck, the shop, the crew.
• Your words. A paragraph on what you do, in your own voice, even if it is rough. Rough and true beats polished and generic.

The details that go on every page

• Business name, exactly as you want it written.
• Phone number, and whether customers text it.
• Email address that a customer should use.
• Address, or the towns you serve if you go to them.
• Opening hours, including the days you are closed.
• The one sentence you would say if somebody asked what you do.
• Payment methods, and whether you take a deposit.
• Licences, insurance or certifications worth mentioning.
• The three services you want more of.

The extras that make a difference

• Reviews you already have, with the name of the person who left them.
• Two or three sites you like, and one line on what you like about each. Send the reason, not just the link.
• One site in your trade you do not like, so we know what to avoid.
• Any questions customers ask on the phone every week. Those become pages.

If you have nothing to send

That is common, and it is not a problem. You describe the business on the call and we write the pages. If you have no logo, we can draw one for $10 when we build the site. If your photos are thin, we use two good ones and leave room for more later. Nothing goes live without your approval.

What not to do

Do not send a twelve-page document of everything you have ever written. Do not wait to send all of it at once if eight of the ten things are ready today. And do not send a competitor's site with "make it like this" and nothing else. Send what you like about it.

When the material arrives early, the build is usually live well inside the days on the package. That is the whole trick.