Planning
What to decide before the first website design.
Answer these five questions before choosing colours and typefaces.
What should the website do?
A consultancy may need better first conversations. A company receiving repetitive enquiries may need clearer service pages. Decide which specific situation should improve. A visual redesign alone does not answer that question.
Who are you trying to reach?
Identify who makes the buying decision, what they already know and which questions remain before they enquire. This determines what belongs on the homepage and what needs a dedicated service page.
What evidence do you have?
Collect real projects, original photography, approved testimonials and verifiable results. If reliable numbers are unavailable, explain the starting point and the work delivered. Honest project documentation is more useful than an unsupported success metric.
What happens after someone gets in touch?
Agree who receives the enquiry, what information they need and whether a CRM or booking process needs to be connected. These decisions affect the form and its implementation. Include them in the brief.
Who decides and approves?
Assign one responsible person, consolidate feedback and reserve time for approvals. Agree who supplies copy, images and access. A realistic schedule accounts for this work on both sides.