We ship a website in 3 business days. That number only holds when the material is ready on day 1. When a build slips, it is almost never the code. It is a logo nobody can find in a usable format, a domain registered by a cousin in 2017, or a decision waiting on someone who is on holiday.
Here are the seven things to have ready. Collecting them takes about 2 hours and it is the highest-value 2 hours in the whole project.
Why does a build stall?
A website build stalls for one of three reasons: missing access, missing assets, or a missing decision. None of them are technical. All three are solved before the build starts by one person spending an afternoon on it, which is why every serious builder sends you a list like this one.
Before a website build starts, have 7 things ready: domain access, a vector logo, real photographs, the pages you need, one sentence describing what you do, your analytics account, and one named person who can approve things. With those in place a build runs without waiting.
Access to your domain
Not the website login. The domain login: the account at the registrar where the name is held, such as GoDaddy, Namecheap, TransIP or Cloudflare. Going live means changing 2 or 3 DNS records, and nobody can do that without that account.
The records usually look like this:
# what goes live on the day
A @ 76.76.21.21
CNAME www cname.vercel-dns.comFind the account now, while it is calm. Recovering a domain from a former employee or a lapsed email address takes between 3 days and 3 weeks, and it is the single most common reason a launch date moves.
Your logo as a vector file
A vector file is an .svg, .ai, .eps or .pdf. It has no fixed size, so it stays sharp at 20 pixels in a browser tab and at 2 metres on a banner. A .png pulled off your old website is not a vector file, and enlarging it does not make it one.
If nobody has the vector, say so on day 1. Redrawing a simple mark takes about an hour. Discovering it is missing at 16:00 on launch day does not.
Photographs that are actually yours
Stock photography of people in a meeting is the fastest way to look like every other site in your sector. Ten honest photographs of your actual premises, your actual work and your actual team will carry a site further than 100 stock images.
They do not need to be professional. A recent phone shoots enough resolution. What matters is that they are real, that you have the right to use them, and that you send the originals rather than screenshots pulled from Instagram.
The pages you truly need
Most small business sites need 3 to 6 pages, and most briefs ask for 12. Every extra page is a page you will later have to keep true.
Start with what a visitor has to know before they contact you. That is usually: what you do, what it costs or how pricing works, who you are, and how to reach you. Write those 4 down before anyone opens a design tool. If a page cannot be justified by a question a customer asks, it is a page you are building for yourself.
A page you cannot keep accurate is worse than a page you never built. Every page is a promise to maintain it.
One sentence that says what you do
Write one sentence, under 15 words, with no adjectives, that a stranger could repeat back correctly. "We install and service commercial coffee machines across the Randstad" is a sentence. "We deliver quality service solutions" is not.
This sentence becomes the headline, the meta description, the first thing an AI system quotes about you, and the answer your own staff give at parties. Getting it right on day 1 saves a rewrite of every other page later.
The analytics and business accounts
Four accounts, all free, all better set up before launch than after:
- Google Search Console, so you can see what people search before they find you. It only starts collecting data from the day it is verified, so verify early.
- Google Business Profile, if you have any local footprint at all. It is often the first result for your own name.
- An analytics account, whichever one you will actually look at.
- The email address the contact form should send to, and confirmation that someone reads it daily.
One person who can say yes
Name them before the build starts. Not a committee, not "we will discuss it internally". One person, reachable during the build, who can approve a direction in writing.
Three business days is possible because direction is agreed once and then nobody interrupts the build. That only works if approval has an address. Two decision-makers with different taste turn a 3 day build into a 3 week negotiation, and the site that comes out the other end is usually worse, because it is an average of two opinions.
What you do not need to prepare
You do not need finished copy. You do not need a sitemap diagram, a mood board, or competitor research. You do not need to know what a CMS is, and you do not need an opinion on fonts.
Bring the 7 items above and a 30 minute call. The writing, the design direction, the structure and the technical decisions are the work you are paying for.