What to prepare before hiring a web designer

The single biggest factor in how fast your website launches isn't your designer's speed — it's how ready you are when the project starts. We've seen identical projects finish in two weeks or two months based entirely on this. Here's the honest checklist, and just as importantly, what you can stop worrying about.

Have these ready

Your goal, in one sentence

'More catering inquiries' beats 'a nicer website.' A specific goal shapes every decision we make, from the layout to the call-to-action to what goes above the fold. Vague goals produce vague sites.

The logins you'll need

Your domain registrar account is the big one — it stalls more launches than anything else, because the domain often got bought years ago by someone who's no longer around. Track it down early. We'll handle the technical side, but we need access.

Your words and pictures

Even rough bullet points for each page and a folder of your best photos move things forward fast. You don't need polished prose — drafts are plenty, and we can refine. What slows us down is a blank page where your content should be.

Three sites you like

And a quick note on *why* you like each one — the big photography, the clean menu, the bold color. This tells us more about your taste in five minutes than an hour of describing it in the abstract.

An honest budget range

It's not a trap. A real range lets us scope the right solution instead of guessing, and it saves everyone the awkward dance of proposing something you were never going to buy. Honesty here is a favor to both of us.

Genuinely fine to skip

• Polished copy — drafts are enough, and we can scope copywriting if you'd rather not write it
• A logo — if you don't have one, that's a branding conversation, not a blocker
• Technical decisions — hosting, platforms, and frameworks are our job to recommend and explain in plain English, not yours to figure out
• A finished sitemap — we'll help you decide what pages you actually need

Show up with your goal, your logins, and your content. We'll handle the rest — that's what you're hiring us for.

Questions worth asking any designer

Before you sign with anyone — us included — ask these three. The answers tell you a lot about who you're dealing with:

• Who owns the website when it's paid for? (The right answer is: you, fully.)
• What does 'done' include — revisions, training, post-launch support?
• What happens if we part ways — can I take the site with me?

Let the intake do the heavy lifting

Our intake wizard walks you through most of this in about three minutes and turns your answers into a structured project brief. By the time we talk, the proposal you get back is specific and priced — because you did the prep without it feeling like prep.