Checklist Before Ordering a Website

Gather your materials first, then send out quote requests

The usual order of events is: the business owner contacts four to five vendors, compares prices, chooses one, sends a down payment, and only then starts looking for their logo file and taking product photos. The work stops at that point, sometimes for up to a month, while the calendar keeps moving.

If the first two steps are reversed, the quotes that come in will be closer to reality, because the vendor can see for themselves what materials are already available and what's still missing. Once you approve a proposal, the work can start on the same day.

In most quotes, including ours, the project duration starts when the brief and materials are received in full, not when the down payment is made. We discuss the difference between these two dates separately in how long it takes to build a website from scratch.

For small businesses, the materials below can be collected over a single weekend. Work on them in order, because the later ones are easier to decide on once the earlier ones are done.

Name one person with the authority to say yes

If your proposal mentions the number of design revision rounds, that number is counted per round. One round means one package of input that is sent and worked on at the same time, regardless of how many people contribute comments to it.

This is what happens when no one is appointed. On Monday, your partner asks for the color to be brighter. On Wednesday, your younger sibling asks for the photo to be changed. On Friday, a friend who claims to understand design asks for the page layout to be reversed, and the third request cancels the first request. Those three messages use up the revision quota that could have been enough for one mature design.

Before sending the first message to any vendor, decide on two things. Who will collect input from everyone and send it as one list, and who has the authority to end the debate when two inputs clash. It can be the same person, or two people, as long as the division of roles is clear from the start.

Choose someone whose chats are responded to within a day. A design that waits for approval for three days pushes the entire schedule back three days, at any vendor.

The logo you've been using is often not the file that's needed

The file floating around on your phone is usually a small JPG with a white background, re-saved from an Instagram post or a photo of a banner. On today's phone screens a logo like that is blurry at the edges, and its white background shows up as a white box as soon as it's placed on a color.

What you need to find is the original file, made by whoever drew the logo. You can tell by the extension: .ai, .cdr, .eps, .svg, or a PDF whose edges stay sharp even when you zoom in very close. If the original file really is lost, a PNG with a transparent background and a longest side of at least two thousand pixels still works for most purposes.

Ask the person who made it today, whether that's a freelance designer, your regular print shop, or a relative who did it on an old laptop. Searching archives like this often takes days, and it's better to spend those days now.

While you're at it, note down your brand's color codes if you have them, which look like #1A73E8, so the buttons and headings on your website match the banners already printed. If there's no record, the colors can be taken from the logo file, so don't get stuck here.

Your photos move the final result further than design choices do

A website's design is mostly a frame, and what fills that frame is your photos. The good news is that phones from the last few years are good enough. What decides the result most is light: shoot near a window in the daytime, turn off the yellow light above, and put the item on a plain surface.

A few practical things that will save you time later:

• Send the original files through Google Drive, or through WhatsApp using the send-as-document option, because photos sent as ordinary images are already compressed by WhatsApp and can't be restored.
• Photograph each item or service twice, once in landscape and once in portrait, so the same photo can be used in the top banner and in a list card.
• Leave empty space around the subject, because the edges of a photo often get cropped when it's shown on screens of different sizes.
• Include photos of your premises and the people who work there, because that's what prospective buyers look for when they're deciding whether to visit.

Send the largest files you have. Shrinking them and converting their format is the website builder's job, and we explain why in what a CDN is and why your photos are slow without one.

Stock photos are fine for mood and backgrounds. For the products you actually sell, buyers can almost always tell the difference.

The list of pages you really need is usually shorter

Write down the list of pages you imagine, then test each one: what question does this page answer for potential buyers. Pages that don't have an answer are usually on the list because other people's websites have them, and such pages add work without adding buyers.

Two that most often make it to the list but are never opened by people: the vision and mission page, and the news page whose content stops at one article from last year. The latter is even detrimental, because the last date listed makes visitors guess that your business is no longer operating.

For many small businesses, one neatly arranged page can answer almost all the questions that come in, and the considerations are in website or Instagram for small businesses. The number of pages is also not the thing that most affects the price, so the point of cutting down this list is so that your website can be finished quickly and each page is useful. The details are in how much does it cost to make a website.

Some text can't be written by anyone but you

Messy sentences can be tidied up by someone else. The details below can't, because they only exist in your head and in your own notes.

• Your full address with landmarks, plus a Google Maps link whose pin you've checked yourself.
• Opening hours for each day, including breaks and holidays that differ from normal days.
• A list of what you sell, using the names customers use when they order, not the internal names in your stock records.
• Prices or price ranges, plus the things that make those figures go up.
• Which areas you serve or deliver to.
• A WhatsApp number that's actually read, and who replies to it.
• An answer to why people buy from you and not from the shop next door.

The last point is where people get stuck most often, and you shouldn't make the answer up yourself. Call three long-time customers who come back most often, ask them why they stay, then write down what they say as it is. What comes out is usually far more specific than your guess, for example because you're willing to take calls on Sundays, or because orders always ship before two o'clock.

All of this can simply be written as bullet points in a note on your phone. Turning them into sentences that read well is already part of the work you're paying for, and waiting until the text sounds good is the most common reason projects get stuck with their owners.

Four things people often prepare that aren't needed

You don't need to rush into buying a domain yourself to be safe. What determines safety is the name and email of the person registered as the applicant, whoever clicks the buy button. We explain domain, hosting, and SSL terms from scratch in explanations for laymen, and reading it is enough to know what you will agree to later.

The technology is also not your decision. The choice between WordPress, static website, or whatever its name has technical consequences that are better understood by the creator. Just convey what you want to change yourself later and how often, and let the technology name follow from there.

As for features, you don't need to compile a list yourself. A chatbot is the most frequently requested example before being checked for suitability, and its limitations are written openly in AI chatbot for website. Just tell us what questions most often come into your phone every week.

Lastly, drawing a mockup or compiling your own SEO keywords is useless. Send two or three website links that you like, each with one sentence about which part you like.

Six questions to send before the down payment, not after

Your materials are already collected. This section is sent to each vendor you invite to discuss, in the same message so that their answers can be compared.

• Is the listed price already included domain, hosting, and SSL for the first year or not.
• How much do you pay for the second year, to whom, and through whose account.
• Will the domain be registered under whose name and email.
• How many revisions are included, and counted from which stage.
• What is the duration of the work you mentioned, counted from what.
• After the website is live, how long is the assistance, and who will change the page content if your price increases next month.

The third question that is often answered casually, even though it determines whether you can take your website address with you. How to check it yourself is available at who is the owner of your website domain.

Ask for a written answer, even via WhatsApp, then compare the contents of each quote before considering the numbers. A cheaper quote with the first year not included may end up more expensive. Signs of quotes that you should skip are collected at characteristics of website design services to avoid, and a comparison of pay-per-project with monthly subscription is available at separate article.

With us, the order is as follows: you send a brief, we chat for about 30 minutes, then within one to two business days a proposal containing pages, features, timeline, and final price is sent to you. The materials you collected earlier only need to be sent after you approve the proposal. The package numbers, starting from Starter Rp 1.500.000, are listed on the pricing page.