How to prepare for a website project and keep it on budget

Here's an industry secret: the single biggest factor in whether a website launches in three weeks or three months isn't the developer — it's how prepared the client is. The build itself is predictable; waiting for content and decisions is what stretches timelines. Here's how to be the prepared client.

1. Know the job of the website

One sentence: “The main job of this site is to ___.” Generate quote requests? Take bookings? Sell products? Everything else — design, pages, features — flows from this. A site with one clear job outperforms a site trying to do five things.

2. Gather your content early

This is the number-one delay in every web project. Before the build starts, collect: your logo files (the originals, not screenshots), photos of your work, team, and premises, the services you offer with rough descriptions, testimonials or reviews you're allowed to use, and your contact details exactly as you want them shown. Dropping it all in one shared folder on day one can shave weeks off the timeline.

3. Collect examples you like (and hate)

Three to five websites you like — with a note about what you like (colours? layout? tone?) — gives a designer more useful direction than any lengthy brief. Examples of what you can't stand are just as valuable.

4. Get your logins together

Domain name registrar, current hosting, Google Business Profile. Hunting for a password from an employee who left in 2019 is a classic launch-day blocker. Track them down early.

5. Appoint one decision-maker

Feedback by committee is where timelines go to die. Gather opinions from whoever you like — but agree upfront that one person consolidates them and gives the final word at each stage.

6. Block a little time

A website project needs perhaps an hour or two of your time per week — reviewing designs, answering questions, giving approvals. Booked in advance, it's painless. Squeezed around a busy schedule, each small delay compounds.

Do these six things and you'll be the client every studio loves — and more importantly, you'll get a better website, sooner, with less stress.