Begin with the business decision
A website is not a collection of pages. It is a guided route from a visitor's question to a useful next step. Before discussing colours or animations, decide the primary action the site should make easier: requesting a quote, booking a consultation, visiting a location, buying a product, or understanding a complex service.
Bring these seven inputs
You do not need polished documents. Clear working notes are enough to make discovery productive.
- Your highest-priority audience and the problem they are trying to solve.
- The services or products that matter most commercially.
- Three competitors or reference sites, with specific reasons you chose them.
- Current logo files, colours, fonts, photography, and brand guidelines.
- Proof: case studies, results, reviews, credentials, and client permissions.
- Required functions such as forms, booking, payments, multilingual content, or integrations.
- One decision-maker, a realistic review schedule, and a target launch window.
Separate content facts from copy
The design team can help shape persuasive copy, but the source facts must come from the business. Service boundaries, turnaround times, locations, policies, and legal claims all need an owner who can verify them.
Collecting those facts early prevents attractive pages from being held up by unanswered operational questions.
Plan for the month after launch
Decide who will publish articles, update services, respond to form submissions, monitor performance, and approve software updates. A maintenance plan is not an optional extra; it is how the value of the launch is protected.
The right website partner should leave you with ownership, documentation, and a clear support path—not a site that only one person knows how to operate.