How to prepare for a website build: an owner's checklist

Deadlines rarely slip because the code was mysterious. They slip because, on day one, there is nothing to build the page from. The contract is already in motion, the logo is trapped in a Word file, the photos live in a chat from three years ago, and the offer is some version of "quality service at a fair price."

My calendar is short. Day 0 is the brief and the contract. Days 1–2 are a working demo built from your material, in the browser. Day 3 is revisions and launch for a landing page. A site takes 7 days. A store takes up to 10 business days, because the catalog and payments still have to be filled in. If the files arrive on launch day, those are not revisions. That is a different scope wearing the old deadline.

I do not need a forty-page brand book before we start. I need three things. Without them I either invent what your business looks like, or I wait. I will not invent it.

1. The logo as a file, not a document.

SVG, or a PNG with a transparent background, large enough that the mark does not turn into squares on a phone. Not Word. Not an Instagram screenshot. Not a photo of the sign, shot at an angle after dark. If the vector is gone and all you have is a picture sitting on a white box, send that on day 0 and say so. I will not extract a clean mark from a docx where the logo was pasted as a preview. That eats an evening. That evening was your demo.

Do not drop the logo into a slide deck and tell me to pull it out. Pull it out yourself. One file, in one folder. If there is no logo at all, say that too. A plain wordmark at the start is more honest than a blurry crest we will throw out in revisions.

2. Real photos. Not stock smiles.

Shoot the work: the job, the hands, the result, the front of the place, the people if they actually talk to customers. Daylight. Originals from the phone, not a file that went through three chats and came out as mush. A landing page does fine on a small set of frames, as long as the frames prove the business exists.

A stock photo of an operator in a headset does not sell a local service. Those frames are already on a lot of other sites. People spot them immediately and stop believing the rest of the copy. A sharp photo of your own yard beats a glossy handshake that never happened. If you do not want faces in the frame, shoot the process and the result. An empty gallery labeled "photos later" looks like a hole on the demo, and you will notice that hole first.

3. One clear offer.

One short paragraph: what you do, who it is for, what happens after the request, and what you do not take on. "A dynamic team of professionals" is not an offer. "Install and service in your city, a visit on the next working day, done in one go" is an offer. The only price on the page is the price you already say to a customer. If you do not have a price, we write that: I will quote after a short description of the job. A number invented to look serious becomes your problem in the inbox later.

Next to that, write down who the customer is. Without it, the page is "for everyone," and a page for everyone does not get a request from anyone in particular. I will write the base copy from that paragraph and from the brief. If the niche needs a specialist writer, I bring that person in. You still deal with me.

Put it in one folder before day 0. Logo, photos, the offer paragraph, who buys. That is enough for you to see a site on days 1–2, not my guesses. No folder, no demo inside the promised window. The code is not the blocker. A contractor who promises a site in three days without these files will either move the date or fill the holes with someone else's pictures. The second option is worse.