Every agency knows the feeling: the design is done, the launch date is close, and the client has gone quiet for three weeks. Then an email finally arrives with an attachment called “services_final_FINAL_v4_revised.doc”, last edited in 2019. And the project grinds to a halt.
We’re not trying to scare you. We want to show you which materials are actually needed, and in what form, so you know what to prepare. An hour of gathering on your side saves weeks on ours.
Your logo, if you have one
Ideally in vector format: an SVG, AI or EPS file. If those letters mean nothing to you, just find the file your designer gave you and send it as is, not pasted into a document.
A logo grabbed from your website at low resolution is fine for a preview at best. On the new site it will look blurry, and any decent agency will ask for a better one.
No logo? You’ll survive. A website can do without one, or simply use your business name set in type. At Webomat, the agent recognises this situation and suggests a wordmark in your brand colours.
Photos: the more your own, the better
You need three kinds of photos:
- Your business: the shop, workshop or office, inside and out.
- People: the team, you at work, if that feels natural for your industry.
- Your work: products, results of your service, before and after.
A phone is perfectly good enough, as long as there’s light. A photo taken in daylight by a window beats stock imagery hands down, because it’s real. People are looking for a business, not decoration.
If you’re short on photos, these days they can be generated. Our agent can create them from a description like “carpentry workshop, oak, natural light”. They’ll never match your own photos, but as a supplement they work well. We treat stock photos as a last resort.
Your offer as bullet points, not essays
We need to know what the business does and who it’s for. The best format is a simple list:
- What you do, in three sentences.
- A list of services or products, with prices if you publish them.
- Who your customers are and what they’re looking for most.
- What sets you apart from competitors, other than “professionalism” (that’s not a difference).
Prices are optional. But if they won’t be on the site, say why: “we quote individually because every project is different” reads far better than a blank space.
Details and small print
The things that absolutely have to be current:
- phone number and email address,
- your address with a map, if customers come to you,
- opening hours,
- your company or VAT registration number, if you invoice businesses,
- the social media profiles you want to show,
- reviews and testimonials you’re allowed to use.
What not to send
The reverse list, from experience:
- Twelve versions of your services description from different years. Pick one, the current one.
- Forty-slide sales decks. Nobody will read them, us included.
- Scans of business cards and flyers as “brand materials”.
- Photos from the office party, unless that’s genuinely part of your brand.
How to hand it over
One folder, sensible file names: workshop-1.jpg, not IMG_4472.jpg. One document describing your offer. A short note saying what matters and what’s just background.
It doesn’t have to be pretty. It has to be complete.
What if you already have a website?
Then most of this work disappears. Webomat’s agent reads your current site and collects the content, photos, logo, contact details and services from it. You just check what’s still accurate and fill in the gaps.
Mini brief: copy and fill in
Instead of emailing a provider “we want a website”, fill in these ten points. An hour of work that saves weeks:
- What the business does (three sentences, as if you were explaining it to a neighbour).
- Your most important service or product, the thing the website needs to sell.
- Who your customer is: industry, location, business or private individual.
- How you differ from competitors. Something concrete, not “quality of service”.
- Prices: show them on the site, show “from” prices, or leave them off (and why).
- Contact details: phone, email, address, hours.
- Three competitors whose websites you like or dislike (this helps a lot).
- Two to five examples of your work or case studies.
- Customer reviews you’re allowed to quote.
- What should happen after someone lands on the site: a call, a form, a visit?
This brief works with any provider, not just us. With us it works twice over, because the same answers are what you’ll use in the revision chat.
How to take good photos with your phone
You don’t need a photographer. You need daylight and fifteen minutes. These rules are enough:
- shoot during the day, by a window, with the ceiling lights off,
- hold the phone horizontally if the photo needs to be wide (a header or background),
- clear out anything you don’t want on the website: rubbish, cigarettes, private noticeboards,
- take three shots of every scene and pick the best,
- skip the filters; we’ll adjust the colours if needed.
A smartphone camera from 2020 is good enough for a website. Seriously. You just need the light.
What no amount of content can replace
An honest list of things photos and copy can’t do for you:
- deciding who the website is for,
- the customer’s permission to publish their review,
- an up-to-date list of services and prices,
- a phone number someone actually answers.
You have to bring all of that. Everything else can be built, written or generated.
The strangest materials web designers receive
We don’t want to make fun of anyone, but from experience: a mouse mat with the logo on it submitted as “the company logo”, a phone photo of a monitor (complete with the photographer’s reflection), a services overview delivered as forty slides with animated transitions, and “graphics to choose from” in a format no device has opened in a decade. All of it can be rescued. But an hour with this guide saves days.
That’s the difference between ordering a website from scratch and swapping an old one for a new one: start with a free snapshot and audit of your current website, and tell us the rest.