What to prepare before commissioning a website

Before commissioning a website, it helps to have at hand: access to your domain (or a decision to buy one together with the contractor), your logo if you have one, notes about your offer and prices, your own photos or a decision to use stock photos, and your current opening hours and contact details. The more of this list is ready, the shorter the material-gathering stage — and that is the stage that most often delays a whole project more than the build itself.

A list of things to prepare

• Domain access — the login and password to the panel of the company where the domain is registered, if you already have one. If you do not have a domain yet, an idea for a name is enough; we can buy it together with you at the launch stage.
• Logo — ideally in a vector format (SVG, EPS or PDF) or at least as a large PNG file with a transparent background. If the logo does not exist yet, say so straight away — it is a separate matter to settle before the website design.
• Texts or notes — you do not have to write finished sentences. Notes are enough: what you do, for whom, how you differ from competitors, what customers ask most often. We put the rest together during the design stage.
• Photos — your own photos of your work, products or premises look more honest than stock photos, because they show a real place and real people. If you do not have any, we will decide together where stock photos make sense.
• Price list — even in approximate form (“from… to…”), or a list of services with indicative ranges. Prices are one of the first things visitors look for; their absence usually means more phone calls just to ask about the price.
• Hours and contact details — address, opening hours, e-mail, phone number. It sounds trivial, but it is one of the items that most often arrive at the last minute.
• Customer reviews — if you collect them (for example on Google), pick a few of the best. The site does not have to have them, but reviews from real customers help new visitors believe that the company is real and reliable.

How long it takes

Gathering these materials takes longer the more people in the company you have to ask for content and photos. It is worth starting to collect them alongside the first conversation about the scope of the site, rather than only after the contract is signed — that way the build stage starts at once, without downtime.

A common trap: the domain and e-mail

Many surprises at the start concern not the texts but the domain. Before we begin, check three things:

• Who the domain is registered to. For .pl domains, enter its name in the WHOIS search on the dns.pl site (the Polish domain registry). If the domain belongs to a company, you will see its name. If the details are hidden, the domain is registered to a private person — make sure it is you, and not, for example, a former IT person.
• Whether you have a login to the registrar’s panel and whether the e-mail attached to the account is yours. Renewal reminders and password resets go to that address.
• Where your company e-mail runs. If e-mails on the domain (for example office@yourcompany.com) work with your current provider, changing the domain’s servers without moving the mail settings can cut off mail for several hours or days. That is why, before a move, all the existing domain settings must be written down, not just those concerning the website.

Pass passwords on through a password manager or agree them by phone — do not send them by ordinary e-mail or a messenger.

What we can do for you

You do not need to have everything ready to start a conversation. We settle the content of the site together — you give the facts and the tone, and we help arrange them into texts that read well. If you want us to write all the texts for you, we price that separately (details in the price list). We also help you choose and buy a domain if you do not have one yet, and advise where it makes sense to use stock photos and where your own photo works better, even one taken with a phone.

See also the full course of our cooperation: How we work.