Hiring a website designer should not be the first step in figuring out your business.
Before anyone starts choosing colors, arranging sections, writing headlines, or deciding where the giant red “CALL NOW” button belongs, you need to understand what the website is supposed to accomplish.
The better the information you give your designer, the better the finished website will be. A good designer can turn your knowledge into a professional website, but we cannot crawl inside your brain and download your business plan. At least not yet. Give AI another Thursday.
Here is what I recommend preparing before hiring someone to design your website.
Understand Your Business Before Building Its Website
You should be able to clearly explain:
- What your business does
- Who your target customer is
- What products or services you offer
- What makes customers choose you
- What you need the website to achieve
- What normally works within your industry
Your website may need to generate phone calls, collect quote requests, book appointments, sell products, establish credibility, explain a complicated service, or direct customers to a physical location.
Those are very different goals.
A local contractor may need project photos, service-area information, and a straightforward quote form. A restaurant may need hours, directions, menus, and online ordering. A consultant may need to establish expertise before asking visitors to schedule a call.
If you do not understand what the website needs to accomplish, your designer is forced to guess. Sometimes we make excellent guesses. Sometimes the business owner suddenly announces halfway through the project that the company is changing services, targeting a different customer, and possibly becoming a food truck.
That changes the entire website.
Gather Your Business Content and Information
You do not necessarily need to write every paragraph yourself. However, your designer will need accurate information to work with.
Start gathering:
- Detailed descriptions of your services
- Information about how the business operates
- The history of the company
- Information about you or the company’s founders
- Your phone number, email address, hours, and location
- Areas your business serves
- Real customer testimonials and verified reviews
- Pricing or general pricing guidance, when appropriate
- Frequently asked questions from actual customers
- Any policies customers need to understand
Think about what customers regularly ask before buying. Those questions can help your designer decide what pages and sections the website needs.
My guide explaining what should be on a business website can help you organize this information without turning the website into a digital storage unit for every thought the company has ever had.
Prepare Professional Logos and High-Quality Photos
Your logo should be professionally designed and available in a vector format whenever possible. Do not hand your designer a tiny, blurry screenshot pulled from Facebook and expect it to become sharp when stretched across a large screen.
That is not how image quality works. Enlarging a bad image just gives you a larger bad image.
I also recommend avoiding low-quality logos generated by AI. An AI tool may produce something visually interesting, but it may struggle with lettering, originality, consistency, and creating the proper files needed for professional use.
For your website photos, gather high-quality JPG or PNG files. Avoid HEIC files when possible because they are not always convenient or compatible with every website workflow.
The best photos are usually real photos of:
- Your team
- Your location
- Your products
- Your equipment
- Your completed projects
- Your services being performed
- The people behind the business
Real photos help establish trust and give the designer something authentic to build around. Stock photos can help fill gaps, but they should not make your business look like every other company in your industry.
Set Up Your Social Media and Confirm the Links
If social media will be connected to the website, establish those accounts before the build begins.
Make sure each profile has the correct business name, contact information, branding, and working link. Your designer should not have to hunt through Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and a profile created by your cousin in 2017 to determine which account actually belongs to the business.
Collect the direct links to every account you want displayed.
Know What Technical Accounts Already Exist
Before speaking with a designer, identify anything the business already uses, including:
- Domain registration
- Website hosting
- Professional email
- Google Business Profile
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
- Social media accounts
- Booking or payment platforms
- Existing website accounts
You should know what exists, where it is located, and who currently controls it.
However, I do not recommend purchasing every website-related service before consulting a designer. You may buy the wrong hosting plan, register an awkward domain, or pay for tools your designer does not need.
Have the information ready, but talk to the designer before committing to new services.
A designer may need to temporarily control or manage certain accounts to complete the project properly. That is not automatically a red flag. The important part is getting the ownership arrangement in writing.
If an asset ultimately belongs to your business, the agreement should state that clearly. If the designer requires temporary ownership or administrative control, document that the arrangement exists to satisfy the business need and explain what happens when the relationship ends.
Our article on questions to ask before hiring an affordable website designer covers ownership, pricing, revisions, and ongoing responsibilities in more detail.
Discuss the Entire Business Before the Build Starts
Once the website has been built is the wrong time to completely rethink the business.
Small changes are normal. Discovering that a sentence needs clarification is normal. Deciding halfway through the build that the target customer, services, brand, and primary goal are all changing is something else entirely.
Those changes can affect:
- Website structure
- Page layout
- Calls to action
- Search keywords
- Written content
- Photos
- Navigation
- Technical features
Think through the business before the designer begins. The more useful input you provide at the beginning, the better the designer can organize everything around your actual goals.
Give the Designer the Information—Then Let Them Design
Business owners should be involved in the project, but involvement and micromanagement are not the same thing.
Give your designer accurate content, honest feedback, and clear information about the business. Then give them room to do their job.
A professional website designer should have a reason behind the wording, layout, buttons, images, and page structure. Good designers also align website content with specific keywords and keyphrases. Replacing carefully written language because another sentence “sounds nicer” can weaken the page’s search focus without the business owner realizing it.
That does not mean you must approve everything without asking questions. A good designer should be able to explain major decisions.
But changing fonts, moving sections, replacing images, and rewriting SEO-focused content one piece at a time can eventually create a website that reflects everyone’s individual preferences while accomplishing absolutely nothing.
That is how Frankenstein websites are born.
Preparation Creates a Better Website
The strongest website projects begin with a business owner who understands the company and a designer who understands how to present it.
Prepare your business information. Gather professional assets. Organize your accounts. Clarify ownership. Explain what the website must accomplish. Then allow your designer to turn those pieces into one focused system.
If you are ready to build and want help organizing everything, K-Wired.com can walk you through the process before the first page is designed.
