What to Prepare Before Ordering a Website: The List That Cuts It Down to an Hour
You have decided to get a website. You have picked a builder or a tool, you have the budget, you even have a free evening. You open the form, type in your company name, and two minutes later you stall on the question “describe what you do”. You come back to it that night, then at the weekend, then you push it to next week. A month goes by, there is still no website, and nothing has actually gone wrong.
This is the single most common reason website projects stall. Not the technology, not a queue at the agency, not revision rounds. It is the material only you can supply: who you are, what you sell, to whom, and why anyone should pick you. The good news is that none of this has to be invented from scratch. Write it down once, ideally before you sit down to order, and the whole thing shrinks from weeks to one sitting.
Why websites take weeks instead of hours
Look at it from the builder’s side, whether that builder is a person or a system. To write a headline for a plumber’s website, somebody has to know whether you take emergency call-outs at night or only do planned installations in new-build homes. Those are two completely different businesses that need two completely different websites, and the difference cannot be guessed from a company name.
That is why every process, from a full agency engagement to an order form, passes the ball back to you at some point. An agency calls it a brief and sends you a twelve-page document. A website builder calls it “add your content” and leaves you staring at an empty template. We call it a ten-minute form. The questions are much the same everywhere, because without your answers nobody can write anything sensible about your business. If you have the answers ready, the form is a formality. If you do not, every question turns into a small project to think through, and that is exactly how the weeks disappear.
Company details: the fifteen minutes that close the first part
Start with the things you do not have to invent, only copy across. Your full business name, spelled the way a customer should see it. Your address, or your service area if you travel to jobs (“Leeds and surrounding towns”, “nationwide”, “Warsaw, Pruszków, Grodzisk”). The phone number you actually answer. An email address. Your company registration or tax number, because it goes into the privacy policy as the data controller’s details, not into the footer for decoration. Opening hours, if you have them and if they are true.
Then one thing that usually causes the most trouble: a short description of the business. Two to ten sentences about what you do, who you do it for and what sets you apart. This is the main source of the copy on your site, so the gap between “construction services, Warsaw” and “I finish new-build apartments in Warsaw and the surrounding area, mostly for people collecting keys from a developer” is the gap between a generic page and a page that speaks to one specific customer.
Do not polish this description or hunt for marketing phrases. Write it the way you explain your job to a friend across a kitchen table. The rest is the builder’s work, or the system’s.
Your offer: a list of services, not “comprehensive solutions”
The second thing to prepare is a list of what you actually sell. Not a broad category, but the individual items people type into Google when they look for you. A hairdresser writes down cuts, colouring, occasion styling. A garage writes down servicing, oil changes, wheel alignment, seasonal tyre changes. One or two sentences of description per item, if you want a say in how it is worded.
For each service, decide right away whether you publish a price. A range, or a “from” figure, works better than silence: it filters out enquiries from people who were never going to buy, and it saves you pointless phone calls. If you would rather show no figures at all, that is a legitimate choice too, as long as you make it deliberately rather than by omission.
Into the same drawer goes the goal of the site. Do you want the phone ringing and enquiries landing in your inbox, do you want a decent digital business card to send people to, or do you want to show off your work? Three different goals, three different page layouts. How to turn those decisions into actual copy is something I covered in the guide on what to write on a business website.
Proof: whatever you leave blank will not appear
This part of the list is the shortest and the most neglected. It covers everything that turns “some company off the internet” into “a company you can trust”:
- the year you started, or how long you have worked in the trade,
- how many jobs you have completed or clients you have served, even roughly,
- the guarantee you offer (say, 24 months on workmanship),
- certificates, licences, liability insurance,
- customer reviews and a link to your Google Business Profile, if you keep one.
The rule is simple: a blank field means that element will not appear on the site at all. Nobody is going to invent fifteen years of experience for you, because nobody knows about them. And if you have thirty Google reviews averaging 4.9, that is the strongest thing you can bring to the project, and it takes up one field.
Photos and a logo: less than you fear
This is where people usually freeze, because “photos” sounds like a studio session and an invoice. In practice a small service business needs a dozen or so images, not an album. Real ones work best: your workshop, your crew mid-job, finished work before and after. A phone in decent light is enough as long as the background is tidy and the framing is simple.
One practical note: you do not need the photos at the moment you order. In our form you only tick whether you want a gallery, and you upload the files afterwards, at which point the gallery appears.
If you have a logo, have it ready as a PNG, JPG, WebP or SVG file up to two megabytes. If you do not, nothing bad happens: the system designs a monogram and you swap it out later from your panel. That leaves colours and mood, and for those a single sentence does the job (“greens, calm, nothing flashy”), or up to three brand colours. Leaving it blank is an answer too, and a choice based on your industry will come out fine.
The domain: the one decision you cannot undo with a click
The domain deserves some thought in advance, because almost everything else can be changed after launch while a web address usually stays put. There are two routes.
If you already own a domain, check two things before you order: who is formally listed as its owner (it happens that a previous developer registered it in their own name), and whether email runs on it. The second matters more than people expect, because moving a site can accidentally cut off company email. That is why we ask about it directly in the form. There is more on the mailbox side in the post on business email on your own domain.
If you do not have one, prepare two or three name ideas and check that each is easy to dictate over the phone. Availability gets checked live while you order, so register nothing in advance. What you will need is the owner details for the registry: street, postcode, city, country and a phone number. Which ending to pick and why hyphens usually get in the way is covered in the piece on how to choose a domain name.
What you do not have to prepare
In a done-for-you model you do not prepare the copy, the design, the icons or anything technical. The text is written from your business description and your list of services. Hosting, the SSL certificate, the mobile version, technical SEO, the consent banner and the privacy policy are all included in the order. Statistics and the contact form configure themselves, and enquiries go to whichever email address you nominate, which does not have to be your public contact address.
You also do not have to decide how many pages the site should have. You can drop a hint (“services, pricing, contact”), but leave it blank and the system works out the structure. The whole run, from form to finished preview, is described step by step in the post on getting a website in an hour.
The checklist, and how long it really takes
| What to prepare | Where it comes from | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Name, tax number, address, phone, email | company paperwork | 5 minutes |
| Service area and opening hours | off the top of your head | 5 minutes |
| Business description, 2-10 sentences | your own words, plainly written | 15 minutes |
| List of services with short descriptions | your head or your price list | 15 minutes |
| Prices or ranges | your commercial decisions | 10 minutes |
| Proof: years, jobs, guarantee, certificates | documents, Google profile | 10 minutes |
| A handful of photos and a logo | phone, hard drive, archive | 20 minutes or later |
| Domain and owner details | registrar, or a name idea | 10 minutes |
That adds up to roughly an hour and a half, most of it spent writing down things you already know. Split it over two sittings if that suits you better: details and offer one evening, photos the next. Keep it all in one file or one note on your phone, because the same page comes in handy later for your Google profile, for a leaflet and for every future supplier. Once it exists, ordering takes a quarter of an hour rather than a month.
When this list is not enough
Not every project fits on one page, and that is worth saying plainly. If you need a shop with a basket and payments, a booking system with a calendar, or an integration with stock control, the conversation looks different and the list of materials gets longer. The same goes for a company with a full visual identity, where colours and typography are set by a brand book rather than by a “site mood” field.
This list is built for a small service business: a few services, one town or several, and the goal of a ringing phone and enquiries from a form. In other cases, treat it as the starting point for a conversation with your supplier, because the first six items will be needed anyway.
In short
Websites are not slow because somebody types the code slowly. They are slow because they are waiting on material that only you have. Write down your name and contact details, describe the business in a few sentences, list your services, add your proof and a handful of photos, and think about the domain. An hour, maybe ninety minutes. After that you can order the same evening and look at a finished preview before anything touches your domain. With us that costs PLN 249 as a one-off with the first year of hosting included, and if you do not approve the preview, we refund the whole payment.