How to prepare content, photos, and service information for a redesign
Content is the #1 cause of stalled web projects. An afternoon of preparation fixes that — whoever ends up building your site.
Here's an industry secret: most website projects don't run late because of design or code. They run late waiting for the business to send photos, service details, and answers. Do this preparation before the project starts and you'll get a better site, sooner, often for less.
Your services, written down properly
For each major service: what it is in plain words, who it's for, what affects the price, and the questions customers always ask about it. Don't polish — bullet points are perfect. You are the only person with this knowledge; everything else in the project can be done by someone else, but not this. One page of honest bullets per service beats any amount of professional filler.
Photos: real beats perfect
- Gather what exists: your storefront, your crew, your work, your food — whatever the business actually looks like. Customers trust one authentic photo over any stock image.
- Shoot what's missing on your phone, in daylight, held steady. Modern phones are genuinely good enough for the web.
- Collect the before/afters if you're in the trades — they're the most persuasive content a service business can own. Just make sure they're really yours.
- Skip the clichés: handshakes, headsets, models in hard hats. Visitors scroll straight past them — or worse, register them as filler.
The facts nobody should have to chase
One document: exact business name, service areas by community, hours, phone, email, license numbers, insurance, year established, payment types, and social links. Every wrong or missing fact here becomes a correction round later — and corrections are where budgets go to die.
The intangibles that make the copy good
Three questions, answered in your own words: Why do customers choose you over the other options? What do they say when they're happy — the actual phrases? What misconception costs you jobs? Whoever writes your site will do a dramatically better job holding these than starting from a blank page.
The access nobody thinks about until it hurts
Find your domain registrar login, your hosting details, and access to your current site's files before the project needs them. If a previous developer holds any of these, start that conversation now — it's the single most common cause of mid-project standstills, and it's entirely preventable.
An afternoon, honestly spent
That's the whole investment: services in bullets, photos in a folder, facts in a document, three questions answered, logins located. Hand that to any competent builder and you've just bought yourself a faster project and a sharper site — and if the builder is us, it shows up directly in the quote.
Preparing for a project?
Start with the free review — it'll tell you what the redesign should actually fix.