Website Build · Prep Checklist
What To Send Us Before We Build Your Website
In This Article
Imagine this: your job photos are on your phone, scattered between invoices and customer texts. You're ready for a new website, but you don't know who controls the old website address — just that it was "some guy, years ago." You just don't know what you actually need to send us to start.
Here's the short version: business basics, services, contact details, photos, domain access, and who approves the final page. Everything below is what each one actually needs to contain, and — more useful than any checklist — exactly what to do when you're missing one of them. Because you probably are, and that's fine.
What do we build from?
A website gets built from decisions, not inspiration. What services to list, how to word them, where the contact button sends someone, whose name is on the domain account — each one has to land somewhere before a page can go live. When those decisions are missing, they don't stop the project; they just turn into another round of messages before the preview can move forward.
A brief is just all those decisions written down in one place, including the ones you can't answer yet. That last part matters more than it sounds like it should — "I don't know who manages our domain" is a useful sentence. A blank field isn't.
What belongs in the brief
This is the whole list, and every row on it is something we actually use — not a formality.
| Send us | What it actually needs | If it's missing |
|---|---|---|
| Business basics | Legal/public name, the towns or areas you serve, hours, your current website address if you have one | We can't confirm what to say about where and when you work — we won't guess at it for you |
| Services | What you actually offer, in your own words, including anything you want left off | Page content stays vague until this is nailed down — "general contracting" vs. "roofing, gutters, and storm repair" changes the whole page |
| Contact info | The phone number and email you want customers using, and a public address if you have a storefront | Contact buttons can't be finalized — they'll point nowhere until this is confirmed |
| Photos | Real photos of your work, your team, or your location that you have the right to use | Flag it — we'll talk through options. We don't assume a photoshoot is included or substitute stock without asking |
| Domain access | Whether you already own a domain, who the account is under, and which provider (GoDaddy, Google Domains, etc.) | A preview can usually still get built — but connecting it live has to wait on whoever controls that account |
| Approvals & requests | Who signs off on the final page, your target timing, and anything specific you want included (a YouTube video, a particular wording) | Timing stays open until this is confirmed — a requested date isn't the same as a promised one |
Domain and hosting account passwords or recovery codes don't belong in a brief, an email, or a text. Tell us who the account holder is and we'll coordinate access directly with them when it's time to connect the domain.
Do I have to write the finished page myself?
No. There's a difference between the facts and the finished sales copy, and only the facts are on you. Plain, honest notes are enough:
Example brief note (illustrative, not a real customer) — "Residential plumbing, Billings and Laurel. Specialize in water heater replacement and drain clearing. Don't do new construction. Open Mon–Sat, emergency calls anytime."
That's a usable paragraph, not a headline. Turning facts like that into copy built to convert — the kind with a hook, a structure, and a reason to act — is its own craft; our guide on writing website copy that converts walks through it if you want to take a run at it yourself. For a basic build, we work from what you send.
What if something's missing?
Something almost always is, and that's not a reason to wait to start. The problem isn't an incomplete brief — it's an incomplete brief that doesn't say so. Watch the difference:
A blank field looks like this: imagine the "contact phone" line in a brief is just left empty. Nothing flags that it needs resolving, so the builder still has to come back and ask before the contact button can be finalized and published — another round of messages, another day the preview sits unfinished.
A flagged gap looks like this: imagine that same field instead reads "Not sure which number to use — we have two lines and I need to check which one the team actually answers." That sentence does the opposite job: it surfaces exactly what needs resolving, and who has to resolve it, before the page goes anywhere.
This is the same mechanism behind a lot of the handoffs we write about — a decision passed from one person to the next can lose something when it isn't written down explicitly. We covered the sales-to-crew version of this in The Handoff Leak. The brief is where it starts for a website build: say what you don't know, not just what you do.
What a usable brief looks like
Copy this straight into an email or a note and fill in what you can:
- Business name, service area, hours, current site (if any):
- Services to list (and anything to leave off):
- Public phone, email, and address (if applicable):
- Photos — attached, or notes on what you can get:
- Domain — own one already? Who's the account under, and where?
- Who approves the final page, and your target timing:
- Missing items / who can resolve them / questions for us:
That last line is easy to leave off, and it's the one that actually moves things forward. Imagine sending that over complete, gaps and all, versus sending three separate texts over two weeks as each piece occurs to you — same information, completely different week for both of us.
Frequently Asked Questions
Your business name and the towns or areas you serve, the services you actually want listed, a handful of real photos you have permission to use, the phone number and email you want customers to reach, and the account details for your domain if you already own one. Send it as one message or document instead of scattered texts — it's the difference between a page built from facts and one built from guesses.
No — real photos of your actual work, team, or location are almost always a better choice than generic stock, even taken on a phone, as long as you have the right to use them. What matters is that they're yours and they're current. If you don't have usable photos yet, say so in the brief instead of leaving it blank; that's a decision to make together, not a reason to wait to start.
You have to supply the facts — what you do, who it's for, how to reach you. Turning those facts into polished sales copy is a separate, bigger job (see our guide on writing website copy that converts) and isn't assumed in a basic build. Plain, honest notes about your services are enough to start from.
Find out who registered it and where — a past employee, a relative, an old agency — and flag that in your brief as unresolved rather than guessing. A preview of your new site can usually still be built while that gets sorted, but connecting the live domain has to wait for whoever controls that account to confirm.
It depends on what's missing. Core facts like your services and contact details are hard to move forward without; photos and domain access can often be worked around for a while. Send what you have and mark the rest as open questions — an honest gap is something we can plan around, a blank field is something we have to guess at.
