The thing that slows a website project down most isn’t design or code. It’s waiting on content: photos that live on three phones, a logo nobody can find the original of, a domain login tied to an old employee’s email. Gather it before your website kickoff, and the project starts moving on day one.
This is the list we send every client, split up by who usually owns each item. Print it, hand out the sections, and check the boxes as things land in a shared folder. If you’re a one-person shop, congratulations, every section is yours.
For the owner: decisions only you can make
☐ Write down every service you offer, and circle the two or three you want more of.
☐ List the towns you serve, starting with the ones where you want more work.
☐ Pick one person who gives final approval.
☐ Note any dates that matter, like a busy season, a home show, or a new service launch.
☐ Bookmark two or three websites you like, and one you don’t, with a sentence on why.
Your services and towns become your sitemap, the outline of every page on the site and how they connect. A page for each main service and each key area gives Google something specific to show when someone searches “retaining wall Geneva” or “kitchen remodel Naperville.”
One clear decision maker matters more than it sounds. It keeps the project from stalling while three people debate a headline.
For the office: logins and access
This section saves the most time. A login stuck with a former employee or an old web company can take days to recover, so start here.
☐ Domain, the account where you registered your web address, like GoDaddy, Network Solutions, or Squarespace Domains.
☐ DNS, the settings that point your domain to your website and email. Sometimes it’s with your registrar, and sometimes it’s somewhere else.
☐ Current website and hosting.
☐ Google Business Profile.
☐ Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and any ad accounts.
If you don’t know where something lives, that’s normal. Tell us what you know, and we’ll track down the rest. Everything we set up stays in your name. You own your website, your domain, your ad accounts, and your files.
For the crew: photos from the field
Photos of your own work are the most convincing thing on a small business website, and your crew takes most of them.
☐ Finished jobs, your crew at work, your trucks, and your shop or office.
☐ Originals, not photos that went through a text message, since texting shrinks them.
☐ Folders by service, like patios, retaining walls, and plantings.
☐ Favorites flagged. Ten great photos beat a hundred okay ones.
☐ A note on anything we shouldn’t use, like a customer who asked not to be featured.
Phone photos are fine to start. Even if they aren’t all usable, they show us what kind of work you’re proud of and whether a photo and video shoot makes sense.
For whoever made your logo: brand files
☐ Your logo as a vector file, a logo built from shapes instead of pixels, usually .ai, .eps, .svg, or a vector PDF. It stays sharp from a browser tab icon to a full-width banner.
☐ Brand colors, if you know them.
☐ Fonts, if you have a set.
☐ Photos of your business cards, yard signs, and truck graphics, so we can see what customers already recognize.
A screenshot from your Facebook page won’t hold up on a big screen. If you can’t find the originals, tell us early. We can redraw a logo or, if it’s time, talk about a refresh.
For us: what we handle
You don’t need to check these boxes, but it helps to know they’re coming:
☐ A sitemap and wireframes, simple layouts that show what goes on each page before any design.
☐ A staging site, a private copy of your new website where you can click around and leave feedback before anything goes live.
☐ Search titles, descriptions, and alt text, the short written description on each image that helps search engines and screen readers understand it. For Ironclad Fencing and Fabrication, that meant alt text on 179 images and search titles and descriptions on all 23 pages.
☐ Templates for anything you’ll add often. For Plandscape, we built templates so their team adds new project pages in minutes.
☐ Launch checks: forms, tracking, and redirects from your old pages.
What happens at the website kickoff
Bring the folder, even if it’s half full. On the call, we walk through your services and towns, confirm who signs off, and give you a real timeline. From there, it’s sitemap, wireframes, design, and the staging site, with your feedback at each step. Plandscape’s site finished ahead of schedule, and having content ready early is a big part of how projects get there.
You don’t need every box checked before you call. Start a shared folder this week with your logo, your best 20 photos, and your services list, and you’re already ahead of most projects. When you’re ready, see how we build websites or tell us about your business.
