What to Prepare Before Your Website Project: A Content Checklist

Ask any web developer what delays projects most, and the answer is rarely code. It’s content. The design is ready, the pages are built, and then everyone waits weeks for the “About us” text, the service descriptions, the team photos and the list of locations.

Content also decides whether the finished website actually brings enquiries. A beautiful design filled with vague text and stock photos won’t persuade anyone.

This checklist lists what to gather before your website project starts. You don’t need everything perfect, but having most of it ready will save weeks and produce a better website.

Start with goals, not pages

Before collecting content, answer three questions in a few sentences each:

1. What should the website achieve? More phone calls? Quote requests? Online orders? Fewer repetitive questions? Pick one or two main goals.
2. Who are your best customers? Describe them: their business or situation, what problem they have, and what they worry about before buying.
3. Why do customers choose you? Ask a few recent customers if you can. Their answers are often different from what you’d guess, and much more convincing.

These answers shape every page. They also help your developer or designer make sensible decisions without asking you about every detail.

Basic business details

• Business name exactly as it should appear, plus legal name if different
• Full address with pin code, written the same way as on your Google Business Profile
• Phone numbers, WhatsApp number and email addresses — and who answers each
• Opening hours, including Sundays and holidays
• Service areas: cities, districts or regions you cover
• GST number, registration details or licences you want to display
• Social media profile links
• Logo files in the best quality you have, ideally vector (SVG, AI or PDF)
• Brand colours and fonts, if you have them

Service or product information

Every main service should eventually have its own page. For each one, write down or record in a voice note:

• What the service is, in the words customers use
• Who it’s for, and who it’s not for
• What’s included, step by step
• How long it usually takes
• A price, starting price or typical range, if you’re willing to share it
• The questions customers ask most often about it, with your answers
• Photos or examples of the work

For online stores, prepare a product spreadsheet with names, prices, sizes, variants, descriptions, stock levels and image file names. It makes the import far quicker.

Photos and visual material

Real photos make a website far more convincing than stock images. Gather:

• Your premises from outside (so people recognise it) and inside
• Your team, individually and together
• Your work: products, projects, before-and-after examples, with customer permission
• Behind-the-scenes shots of your process
• Certificates, awards or memberships worth showing

Modern phones take good enough photos if you shoot in daylight, keep the lens clean and hold the phone steady. For the homepage and team photos, a half-day with a professional photographer is often one of the best investments in a website project.

Send original files, not images saved from WhatsApp, which compresses them heavily.

Proof and trust content

• Reviews: links to your Google reviews, plus a few specific testimonials with the customer’s written permission to publish their name.
• Client list: only include names or logos of clients who have agreed.
• Case examples: a short description of a problem, what you did and the result, for your best projects. See our guide to writing case studies.
• Numbers: years in business, projects completed, customers served — only figures you can stand behind.

Never invent testimonials or use stock photos labelled as your team. Customers notice, and it undermines everything else on the site.

About and team content

• How and when the business started, in a few honest paragraphs
• What you believe about doing the work well
• Short bios for key people: role, experience, qualifications
• Anything that makes you different: in-house teams, guarantees, local roots, specialisation

The About page is often the second most-visited page on a business website. People want to know who they’ll be dealing with.

Legal and policy pages

• Privacy policy explaining what data your forms and analytics collect
• Terms of service, if relevant
• For online stores: refund, return, cancellation and shipping policies
• Cookie notice if you use analytics or advertising tracking

These should reflect what your website and business actually do. Copying another site’s policies often leaves you with promises you don’t keep or terms that don’t apply.

Pages most business websites need

Every business is different, but most service business websites need some version of these pages:

• Home: what you do, who for, where, and the main way to contact you
• A page for each main service: one service per page, so each can answer its own questions and rank for its own searches
• About: your story, team and what makes you different
• Work or portfolio: examples, projects or case studies
• Reviews or testimonials: genuine, with permission
• FAQs: common questions, answered honestly
• Contact: phone, WhatsApp, form, address, map and hours
• Location pages: only if you have real branches or meaningful service areas
• Blog or guides: optional at launch, but valuable if you can keep it going

List the pages you think you need before the project starts, with a sentence on what each should achieve. It helps the designer plan navigation and makes quotes more accurate.

Content that helps people find you

Content isn’t only for visitors who are already on your site; it’s also how new visitors find you on Google. Before writing, collect the words your customers use when they search for what you offer. Note the questions people ask before buying, the names they use for your services, and the towns or areas they search for.

Each service page should then use those words naturally in its heading, introduction and FAQs. Our guide to keyword research for small businesses shows how to find them with free tools.

Access and accounts

• Domain registrar login (or who holds it)
• Existing hosting details
• Google Business Profile, Search Console and Analytics access
• Email setup details if email runs on the same domain
• Payment gateway account, for online payments

Collect these early. Chasing a login that a former employee or old developer set up can delay a launch by weeks. Store everything in a password manager or a secure shared document, note who owns each account, and make sure at least two trusted people in the business can reach it. That one habit prevents a surprising number of website emergencies later.

Decide who approves content

Projects slow down when content passes between several people with different opinions. Before starting, agree who writes or supplies each section, who checks facts such as prices and qualifications, and who gives final approval. One decision-maker with clear deadlines keeps the project moving.

It also helps to agree that the website can launch with good content rather than perfect content. Pages can be improved after launch based on what visitors actually do, which is often more useful than another round of internal debate.

If you’re replacing an existing site

Make a list of the pages on your current site, mark which ones still matter, and note any pages that bring visitors from Google. Those pages and their addresses need protecting during the move. Our guide to redesigning without losing rankings explains why.

With this checklist mostly done, a website project moves much faster and the result says the right things to the right people. If you’d rather have help, talk to us. Our process includes content planning and copywriting, so you can start with conversations instead of blank pages.