What to Send Us Before We Build Your Site
The four things that decide whether a build takes a fortnight or three months, and none of them are technical.
Almost every slow build is slow for the same reason, and it is never the code.
A website build does not usually stall on design or on code. It stalls waiting for content.
That is not a complaint about clients. Nobody runs a business with their copy already written. But it is worth knowing before you start, because the four things below are what actually decide whether your site goes live in a fortnight or in three months.
1. What the site has to do
One sentence is enough. Get the phone to ring. Take bookings. Stop people asking the same question. Look serious enough to win a bid.
It sounds too simple to matter and it decides everything: what goes on the first screen, what the buttons say, and what gets left off. A site built to do one job clearly beats a site built to mention everything.
2. Your photographs
The real ones. Your finished work, your shop, your team, your food. Taken on a phone in reasonable light is fine and is very often better than stock, because stock says nothing about you and everybody recognises it.
Send the biggest versions you have and let us handle the sizing. We compress and format them so they stay fast, which is most of what makes a site feel quick.
3. The words only you know
Not polished copy. We write that with you. What we need are the facts nobody else can supply: your service area, your hours, your licence numbers, what you will and will not take on, and the questions customers ask you every week.
That last one is the most valuable thing you can send. The questions people already ask are the page they are already looking for.
4. Who says yes
One person. A build with three approvers and no decider is the slowest kind there is, and it is slow in a way that costs you the season you were trying to hit.
If you have a date that matters, a registration window, an opening, a busy season, tell us at the start and we will tell you honestly whether it is reachable before you commit to anything.
That is the whole list. If you have most of it, tell us what you are building. If you do not, tell us anyway and we will work out what is missing.