What to prepare before you order a website

Design and code are the studio’s job. Yours is to explain your business and provide the materials: nobody knows your customers better than you do. The more is ready before the start, the faster the work goes and the more accurate the quote. Here’s what’s worth gathering.

The goal of the site

Start with a question, not with design: what should a visitor do on your site? Call, book, send an enquiry or buy. When there’s one main action, the whole site can be built around it.

It also helps to write down:

• who your customers are and how they hear about you;
• the questions they ask most often;
• what sets you apart from others in your city;
• a few websites you like, and what exactly you like about them.

The pages

Sketch a list of pages. It doesn’t have to be final, just what you want to tell people about. For a small business, that’s often a home page, services (one page, or a page per service), prices, About and Contact. Reviews, if they’re real. A blog, if you’re ready to write for it.

Texts

They don’t have to be polished, but the facts must be yours. Gather them in one document:

• your services or products: what they are, who they’re for and what they cost, if you’re ready to show prices;
• your address, opening hours and the areas you serve;
• answers to the questions customers ask most;
• a few words about yourself and your team.

If the site needs several languages, you’ll need texts in each of them. Machine translation shouldn’t go on a site without a check by someone who knows the language.

Photos and video

Your own photos work best: customers want to see your place, your work and the people they’ll meet. What helps:

• your premises, outside and in;
• your work or products, close up;
• your team at work;
• original files, not screenshots or photos forwarded through a messenger app: they lose quality on the way.

Be careful with pictures from the internet: almost all of them belong to someone. Use your own photos, or photos with a licence that allows this kind of use.

Logo and style

If you have a logo, find the original vector file: SVG, PDF, AI or EPS. A picture from your social media usually won’t do: it’s small and sits on its own background. Your brand colours and fonts help too, if you’ve already chosen them.

If you don’t have a logo, that’s a separate job. It can be done together with the site or on its own, under Brand & graphics.

Logins and access

Track these down early: they’re needed at the very end, when it’s time to launch.

• Domain. Where it’s registered and whose name it’s in. If you don’t have one yet, pick a name. Only those with a connection to Canada can register a .ca domain: a citizen, a permanent resident, a company incorporated in Canada or a province, and a few others. That’s a rule of CIRA, the organization that runs .ca (CIRA rules (opens in a new tab)).
• Your current site and hosting, if you have them: the control panel address and login.
• Google: your Business Profile, plus Google Analytics and Search Console if they’re set up.
• Services the site will connect to: online booking, payments, newsletters, social media.

Don’t send passwords in a regular message. Many services let you invite your developer as a user: it’s safer, and you can remove the access later.

Deadline, budget and who decides

Say right away when you need the site and what budget you have in mind. A budget range doesn’t commit you to anything; it helps us suggest what fits within it, for example launching the essentials now and adding the rest later.

And agree on who signs off on the design and the texts on your side. When one person makes the call, the work doesn’t stall while it waits for an answer.

The legal bits

If your site has an enquiry form, you’re collecting personal information: names, phone numbers, emails. In Canada this is governed by the federal law PIPEDA, while Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec have their own private-sector privacy laws, deemed substantially similar to it (Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (opens in a new tab)). Your site will need a privacy policy, and it’s best to have a lawyer review it.

Not everything is ready? That’s normal

You don’t need to have it all before the first call. Start with the goal of the site and your list of services. On that first call, we’ll put together a list of what’s missing and decide what can be done along the way.

What all of this might cost: how much a website costs for a small business in Canada.