Checklist: What To Give Your Website Developer

ByLaurie
website information checklist

You’ve decided to build a new website or revamp your existing site, and you’re gathering the materials that you’ll need to give to your web developer. Providing a complete picture of your business, along with your goals and preferences, will help the developer do the best job possible. If you are still interviewing potential developers, you’ll need to provide enough of this information for them to give you a proposal with a price and time estimate for your project based on the scope and design details.

Your developer will likely conduct a discovery phase with a list of questions for you, but this list will give you a head start on assembling the needed information. Once you have an agreement and are ready to begin, you’ll need to send all the actual content (copy and photos) that you agreed to provide.

  • Business Summary
    Of course, you’ll need to provide the basics such as business name, domain name, hosting account info, and address/contact info. In addition to these basics, you should provide a description of what your business does, your mission statement, your target customer profile, and what makes your business unique. Also include some examples of other businesses in your space (your competitors).
  • Building The Brand: Logo, Colors, Patterns
    If you have a logo and brand colors, do you want to keep them or make changes? If you don’t have a logo or brand colors/patterns, you’ll need to design them before you can start the website design. This step involves evaluating the branding assets you have and deciding how much to incorporate into the new brand design.
  • Site Structure
    What pages are essential and what navigation categories do you want? Your designer might suggest improvements to your ideas, but your preferences will help guide the process. If you have a website already, what do you like about it and what do you want to remove or change? Do you need an online store? Do you need a blog? Do you need to list upcoming events or include other dynamically changing data? Do you want to have an email list and send out newsletters or email campaigns? Do you need an online booking area?
  • Style Preferences: Sites, Colors, And Fonts That You Love/Hate
    Give your web developer links to some websites that you do and don’t like, and try to say specifically what you like and dislike about them. Consider site structure, colors, fonts, and overall style.
  • Photos & Illustrations
    For retail businesses, provide product photos. You might need to hire a product photographer, but your website developer might be able to do some photo retouching for you if you have existing photos that just need a little improvement. For service businesses, provide photos that show your work or that show people enjoying the benefits of your service. Stock photos can be helpful, but custom photos make a bigger impact and look more genuine.
  • Copy
    You might need help writing the copy, but you can provide some of the basics to get the project going. Your web designer might be able to write copy or might suggest the services of a professional copywriter if needed.
  • Testimonials
    If you have them, customer testimonials are powerful and important to include. Your designer can create an elegant way to incorporate the customer comments whether they are written or in video form.
  • Your Bio and Info About Team Members
    Provide the information that you want to appear in your “About” section for you and for any team members. Include copy and photos. Also include any business history that should be noted in the About section
  • Your Goals
    You probably want your site to help connect you to new customers and to represent you in a professional way. What other goals do you have for your site? What do your customers hope to accomplish by visiting your site?
  • Ongoing Needs
    Will you need help maintaining the site after launch? Clients often want to be able to do their own site updates for things like adding new products or posting announcements, but clients often appreciate help with updating WordPress and plugins. Basic site maintenance plans can be perfect for this purpose. You can help your developer set up your site optimally for you by clearly stating how you want to handle the various site maintenance tasks.

I hope that list is helpful. Good luck with your site building!

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