How to Prepare Your Website Content Before Design Starts

The short answer is a list, not a finished website. Before design starts, what a business needs to hand over is a named list of the pages it wants, what is known so far for each page, its real business facts, usable photographs and a logo file, all collected in one place. Anything you do not have yet should be written down as missing rather than left as an empty section.

The reason is mechanical rather than editorial. A layout is designed around the content that has to sit inside it, so a page with no copy, no prices and no photographs is not a page that can be designed, only a placeholder. It also reaches the commercial side. As our guide to what a website costs in Ghana sets out, a final quotation depends on the number of pages, the functionality you need and how ready your content is when we begin, and a Starter website generally takes about one to two weeks once content is available. The word carrying the weight in that second sentence is once.

What follows is the list itself, in the order that makes it easiest to work through: the pages, the words on them, the business facts, the images, the gaps you have not closed yet, and how to hand the whole thing over. It applies to any provider you are talking to, us included.

Start with the list of pages

Write down every page you want, one per line, with a job for each. Not “a company website”, but “home”, “services”, “about”, “contact”, “gallery”. The page list is what scope is built on, and page structure is agreed with the client before the build starts, so this list is worth more attention than anything else you send.

Give each page one sentence describing what somebody should do after reading it: call, send an enquiry, ask for a price, request a booking. If you cannot finish that sentence, the page may not be needed yet, and finding that out before design begins costs you nothing.

Two kinds of page are worth putting on the list even if you would not have thought of them. The first is the one that answers the questions a customer asks before making contact, which is not always the same as the page that describes the services. A workshop that publishes how to find it, when it opens and how to send a part for a quote is carrying information a visitor needs. The second is the page that says what happens after contact, because an enquiry form that promises a reply and then describes nothing leaves the reader guessing what happens next.

What each page has to contain

This is the working version of the list. Read down the last column and you have your collection task.

Page	What it has to answer	What you supply
Home	What your business does, who it is for, and what to do next	A headline and one or two sentences in your own words, your best photograph, and the address or number an enquiry should go to
About	Who you are, how long you have been working, and why a customer should trust you	Your background, the people who do the work, and where you work from
Services	What each service involves, who it suits, and how to ask for it	One description per service, written the way customers describe it rather than the way you describe it internally
Products, if you sell	What each item is, what it costs, and whether you have it	The list with prices, and a photograph for each item
Contact	How to reach you, where you are, and when you are open	Collected in the business facts list below
Policies, if they apply to you	How you handle delivery, returns, complaints and personal data	Your own wording, or a line naming who will write it and when

Keep the policies row in your list even if you have nothing written yet. Wording about how a business handles personal data or complaints carries weight that marketing copy does not, and leaving it out means a page gets designed without it.

The business facts only you can supply

These are not writing tasks. They are facts, and only you have the current versions.

• Your trading or registered name, written exactly as it should appear, including any Co. Ltd, Enterprise or trading suffix
• Every phone number and email address you want published, and which of them is the enquiry address rather than a personal one
• Your address, or the area and places you actually serve, and your opening hours
• The services you offer, in the words customers use for them
• Prices or price bands, and whether they are meant to be public. Some businesses decide this deliberately, and it is better decided before a prices page is designed than after
• Your trading or registered name, written exactly as it should appear, including any Co. Ltd, Enterprise or trading suffix
• Every phone number and email address you want published, and which of them is the enquiry address rather than a personal one
• Your address, or the area and places you actually serve, and your opening hours
• The services you offer, in the words customers use for them
• Prices or price bands, and whether they are meant to be public. Some businesses decide this deliberately, and it is better decided before a prices page is designed than after
• The social profiles that should be linked, and the ones that should not
• Testimonials in the customer’s own words, with their permission to use them. Real sentences are worth more than a polished paraphrase
• The social profiles that should be linked, and the ones that should not
• Testimonials in the customer’s own words, with their permission to use them. Real sentences are worth more than a polished paraphrase

Send these as facts rather than as marketing. “Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm” is usable. “Open whenever you need us” is not, and it is the second version that ends up on a live page.

Images and the logo

Our advice is to start with the logo and the photographs. Neither is about quality, and both hold up layout decisions. Three smaller items belong on the same list.

• Your logo as a file, not a picture of one. A screenshot, or a copy saved out of a slide, shrinks badly everywhere a website puts it. Ask whoever made the logo for the original file. While you look for it, a text version of the name can stand in
• Your brand colours, if anybody wrote them down. A colour code is enough, and nothing else is needed. If nobody has it, a clear photograph of something branded — a sign, packaging, a business card — is enough to take the colour from
• Photographs at the largest size you have. A photo taken on a phone and sent unedited is normally usable. A photo already shrunk to fit a social post has been cropped and compressed, and arriving that way removes your say over how it gets cropped
• One line saying what each photograph shows. Image alt text sits inside the basic on-page search setup included with every new website, so naming what is genuinely in each picture gives the writer something accurate to work from. If you cannot describe an image in a line, it may be the wrong photograph for that page
• Permission for anything you did not take. Photos shot by a customer, a supplier or a passer-by carry a question that is far cheaper to answer now than at launch

When you do not have something yet

Missing items are ordinary. What creates delay is a missing item that nobody owns. Write each gap as a line with a name and a date against it — “photographs for 40 products, Yaa, by the 14th” — and an open question becomes a task that can be tracked and a schedule that can be built around what is actually happening.

Two decisions are worth making early. The first is who gives the final word on wording and layout, and making sure that person is reachable, because an approval sitting with nobody holds up everything behind it. The second is what happens to a page whose content will not exist in time. Whether that page waits, goes live thin, or is dropped is a decision to take before the structure is agreed rather than after.

Do not fill a gap with invented text to make a page look finished. A service description written to fill space reads as filler and has to be written again. A short honest page that says what you do and how to reach you is easier to build, easier to check and easier to correct later.

How to hand it over

The format matters less than people expect. A few habits help.

• One place, one message. A folder or a single document the provider can open, rather than items arriving across a week of messages. If items do come separately, label each one with the page it belongs to
• One file per page, named after the page. “Services”, “About”, “Contact”. Photographs named after what they show beat a camera default
• Words as text that can be edited and commented on. A document or a message is easier to reply to than a screenshot, and far easier to reuse after launch
• Say what is final. Mark anything still being written as a draft, so it is not treated as settled copy and built around as though it were

What Sobiaonline does with what you send

Scope, deliverables and timelines are confirmed in writing before work begins, and the page structure is agreed with you before the build starts. Our pricing page notes that existing branding, photographs and draft content are helpful, and that we guide you through planning and organising the content where necessary. Who writes the words and who enters them for a given package is not stated there, so treat it as unconfirmed and put it in writing yourself, in whichever direction applies. If you are writing it, give a date you can actually hold. If you expect it to be written for you, ask for that as a named line in the scope.

The same applies to keeping the site running afterwards. Six months of technical maintenance is included with every new website, covering software updates within the agreed scope, routine backups, security monitoring and correction of technical faults within the agreed scope. It does not include entering content on your behalf, so who types the next page is a decision worth making before launch rather than discovering afterwards.

If you want to know what a given number of pages and features costs before you have gathered any of it, that does not have to wait. What each package covers is on the packages page, the full service detail is on the web design services page, and the portfolio shows the kinds of site we build. Send your page list and your open questions through the contact page, and you can have the scope and the schedule in writing before anything starts.

Frequently asked questions