What should you have ready before starting a website project?

You probably don’t need to prepare as much as you think.

I’ve seen business owners put off a website project because they don’t feel ready.

They haven’t written the copy.
They don’t know what pages they need.
They haven’t figured out SEO.
Their photos aren’t organized.
They don’t know exactly what they want the website to look like.

Those things need to be figured out eventually.

But most of them shouldn’t be your job to figure out before the project starts.

If you’re hiring someone to build a strategic website, determining the positioning, messaging, structure, customer journey, search strategy, content, and design should be part of the work.

What your website partner needs from you is something different:

Access to the business.

We need to understand what you’re building the website for.

Start with why you’re changing the website at all.

Before asking what the new website should look like, ask:

Why are we doing this now?

There’s usually a reason.

Maybe your business has grown significantly, but your website still represents the company you were five years ago.
Maybe you’re getting plenty of referrals, but when those people visit your website, you’re not confident it reinforces the recommendation.
Maybe you’ve added services.
Maybe you’re moving into a more profitable market.
Maybe you’re investing in advertising or SEO and don’t want to send more traffic to a website that isn’t doing its job.
Maybe you’re attracting inquiries, but not the right ones.

Or maybe you’re simply tired of saying:

“Our website doesn’t really show what we do anymore.”

That’s the starting point.

A redesign shouldn’t begin with:
What should our new website look like?

It should begin with:
What needs to change for the business when this project is finished?

1. Know where the business is going.

Your new website shouldn’t simply document the company you have today.

It should support where you’re going next.

Before a website project begins, we want to understand things like:

• Which services generate the most revenue?
• Which are the most profitable?
• Which services do you want more of?
• Are there services you want to deemphasize?
• What kinds of customers are the best fit?
• Are you moving upmarket?
• Are you entering new geographic markets?
• Are you hiring?
• Are you launching something new?
• What do you want the business to look like in the next few years?

These aren’t just business questions.
They’re website questions.

If one service represents the future of the company, it probably shouldn’t receive the same amount of attention as a service you’re slowly phasing out.

If you’re trying to attract larger projects, the positioning, proof, photography, and customer journey need to support that.

A website can accurately describe your business and still strategically point it in the wrong direction.

2. Know who you’re trying to reach.

You don’t need a 15-page customer persona that tells us your ideal customer’s age, favorite coffee order, and what kind of car they drive.

We care much more about how they make a decision.

Who typically contacts you?
What has happened in their life or business that made them start looking?
What are they frustrated with?
What are they worried about?
What do they ask before buying?
What makes them hesitate?
What alternatives are they comparing you against?
Why do your best customers ultimately choose you?

And what are they actually trying to accomplish?

A homeowner isn’t necessarily buying a kitchen remodel because they desperately want cabinetry.

A business owner isn’t necessarily buying a strategic website because they want a new homepage.

There is usually a bigger desired outcome underneath the service.

That’s the part we need to understand.

3. Bring us what your customers are already telling you.

Some of the best website copy probably already exists.

It just isn’t on your website yet.

It’s buried in:

• Google reviews.
• Emails.
• Sales calls.
• Testimonials.
• Contact-form submissions.
• Conversations your team has every week.

Pay attention to phrases like:

• “We chose you because…”
• “I was worried about…”
• “I couldn’t find anyone who…”
• “The thing I appreciated most was…”
• “I wish I had done this sooner because…”

That’s customer research.

And it’s often far more valuable than sitting in a conference room trying to brainstorm a clever headline.

Your customers tell us how they describe the problem.
Our job is to listen.

4. Gather the proof.

Your website will make claims about your business.

The next question is:
How are we going to prove them?

If you tell me you’re one of the most trusted contractors in Indianapolis, what can I see that makes me believe you?

If you say your process is different, can you show me how?

If you say you create exceptional work, can I see it?

Useful proof might include:

• Google reviews
• Testimonials
• Project photography
• Before-and-after photos
• Case studies
• Client results
• Awards
• Certifications
• Licenses
• Professional affiliations
• Team experience
• Client logos
• Meaningful business statistics

You don’t necessarily need all of these.

But we want to identify the strongest evidence available and build it intentionally into the website.

Strong positioning makes the promise. Strong proof makes it believable.

5. Gather what already exists.

You don’t need to organize everything perfectly.

But give your website partner access to the existing business materials that can help us understand the company.

That could include:

• Brand assets. Logos, colors, fonts, brand guidelines, previous design files.
• Photography. Team photos, project photos, office photos, videos, before-and-afters.
• Sales materials. Brochures, proposals, presentations, service guides, pricing information.
• Marketing. Ads, email campaigns, social media, direct mail, lead magnets.
• Existing website. Analytics, Search Console, current pages, old landing pages and important URLs.
• Business information. Service descriptions, team bios, locations, FAQs, processes, certifications and policies.

But there’s an important distinction:

Existing content is research, not automatically the blueprint.

Just because something appears in your current brochure doesn’t mean it belongs on your new website.

Part of the strategy is deciding what stays, what changes, what’s missing, and what no longer serves the business.

6. Know what the website needs to connect to.

A business website rarely operates alone.

It may need to connect with:

• Your CRM
• Scheduling software
• Email marketing
• Payments
• Customer portals
• Review platforms
• Analytics
• Call tracking
• Job applications
• Forms
• Internal systems
• Third-party software

This is worth identifying early.

Because sometimes a request that sounds simple…

“We just need a form here.”

…isn’t actually simple.

What happens after someone submits it?
Who gets notified?
Where does the information go?
Does it create a CRM record?
Should the customer receive something?
Does your team need to update anything manually?
Does another system need the data?

This is where website planning starts crossing into business systems and customer experience.

And those decisions are much easier to make before development than after launch.

7. Decide who makes the decisions.

This isn’t the glamorous part of website strategy.

It’s still important.

Before starting, determine:

• Who is the primary point of contact?
• Who provides feedback?
• Who has final approval?
• Who needs to approve messaging?
• Who needs to approve design?
• Are there compliance, legal, corporate, or franchise requirements?

A project becomes much harder when three weeks into strategy, someone new enters the conversation and says:

“Actually, I need to approve all of this.”

The people with decision-making authority should be involved at the appropriate stages from the beginning.

8. Make room to participate, but don’t expect to run the project.

You shouldn’t need to project-manage the people you hired to build your website.

But you can’t completely disappear either.

We can research.
We can study competitors.
We can research search behavior.
We can develop your positioning.
We can plan the customer journey.
We can build the sitemap.
We can write.
We can design.
We can develop.

But there are things we can only learn from you.

You know what customers ask before signing.
You know which projects are the most profitable.
You know what keeps going wrong operationally.
You know which services you don’t actually want more inquiries for.
You know where you want the company to be three years from now.

You bring the business expertise.

Your website partner should bring the process for turning it into a strategic digital experience.

What you don’t need before starting.

This is worth making explicit.

You do not need:

• A finished sitemap. Determining which pages should exist should come from business, customer, competitor, messaging, and search research.
• Finished copy. If strategy and copywriting are included, don’t write the entire website before the strategy happens.
• A list of SEO keywords. Search research should determine what your customers actually search and which opportunities align with the business.
• A complete design direction. Preferences are helpful. But design should support the strategy rather than strategy being reverse-engineered around a visual inspiration board.
• Every photo you’ll ever need. Existing photography is useful. If important images are missing, photography can be planned around what the website needs.
• All the answers. That’s why you’re hiring someone.

The website plan should come before the website design.

This is the part of the process I think gets backwards surprisingly often.

A designer opens a blank canvas.
A homepage starts taking shape.
Then everyone asks:
What should we put here?

We prefer the opposite.

1. Understand the business.
2. Understand the customer.
3. Understand the competitive landscape.
4. Decide how the business should be positioned.
5. Develop the messaging and search strategy.
6. Map the customer journey and website architecture.
7. Then we design.

Because once we know what the website needs to accomplish, design has a job to do.

It’s no longer decoration.
It’s communication.