Why preparation matters more than most people realise.
I have built websites for businesses across Kent for the better part of two decades. The fastest builds — the ones that go from brief to live in a fortnight — all have one thing in common: the owner arrived prepared. They had their domain, they had rough copy, they had a handful of decent photos, and they knew what they wanted a visitor to do when they landed on the page.
The slow builds, the ones that drag on for eight weeks and end with someone frustrated, almost always stall on the same handful of things. Not technical problems. Admin problems. Things that take an afternoon to sort but nobody thinks to do them until the designer is waiting.
None of this is a criticism of clients. Most people have never built a website before. They just need a list. So here it is.
Your domain name: own it yourself, in your own account.
Your domain is the address of your business online. It should be registered in your name, in an account you control, not in a web designer's account or your nephew's GoDaddy login. This matters because designers come and go, relationships end, and if someone else owns your domain you are at their mercy.
A .co.uk domain from Namecheap or 123-reg costs around £8 to £12 a year. If you have not got one yet, get one today. If you already have one but are not sure who controls it, check now. Log in, confirm the renewal email goes to an address you actually read, and make sure your payment card is current. Losing a domain because the renewal bounced to a dead inbox is a genuine thing that happens, and recovering it can cost hundreds of pounds — if it is even possible.
On the name itself: shorter is better, .co.uk is the right choice for a UK business targeting UK customers, and hyphens are to be avoided. If your first-choice domain is taken, come back to the guide I wrote on choosing the right domain name before you settle for something awkward.
What the site needs to do: one clear goal per page.
Before anyone touches a design tool, you need to answer a single question: what is the one thing you want a visitor to do when they land on this page? Book a call. Buy a product. Send an enquiry. Find your address. Pick one. A page that asks a visitor to do five things usually results in them doing none.
For most small Kent businesses — a plumber in Deal, a therapist in Canterbury, a florist in Faversham — the answer is either "call me" or "fill in this short enquiry form". That is it. Once you know that, the whole site gets easier to plan, write, and build.
If you have an online shop, the goal per product page is obvious (buy it), but you still need to think about what the homepage is for. Is it to get people to browse by category? To push a seasonal range? To build trust before they hand over card details? Worth deciding before the build starts, not halfway through.
Copy: write the words before the design begins.
This is the one that holds up more builds than anything else. Design without copy is like fitting a kitchen without knowing how many people will use it. The layout, the spacing, the call-to-action buttons — all of it depends on what the words actually say.
You do not need to be a copywriter. You need a rough draft. For a five-page business site, that means: a paragraph or two about what you do and who you do it for; a list of your main services with a sentence on each; a short paragraph about yourself or your business (the "about" bit that makes you human); and the practical details — address, phone, service area, opening hours if relevant.
Write it in a Google Doc. Ignore formatting. Do not worry about whether it is perfect — it will be edited. The point is to have something to work from rather than a blank box staring at you two weeks into the build.
One thing worth thinking about: write for the customer, not for yourself. "We are a family-run business with 15 years of experience" is less useful to a visitor than "We fix boilers in Thanet, usually same day". The first tells them about you. The second tells them what they want to know.
Photos: real ones, even imperfect ones.
Stock photography is usually a mistake on a small business site. It signals that the business is interchangeable with every other business using the same library image of a smiling person in a hard hat. Real photos — of you, your work, your premises, your products — do more for trust in three seconds than any amount of well-chosen words.
You do not need a professional shoot to get started. A recent iPhone in decent daylight produces images that are good enough for a first version of a site. Take photos of: your finished work (before and after if relevant), your workspace or vehicle, yourself (one head-and-shoulders shot, plain background, natural light), and any products you sell. Twenty photos is more than enough.
If you do want professional shots and you are based in East Kent, it is worth budgeting around £150 to £300 for a half-day with a local photographer. That library of images will last you two to three years and will be used across the site, Google Business Profile, and any print materials. Honest value for the money, in my experience.
One technical note: send photos at full resolution and let the developer compress them for the web. Do not resize them yourself first — you cannot make a small file larger without losing quality, but you can always make a large file smaller.
Payments and bookings: know what you need before you spec the build.
If the site needs to take payments — for products, deposits, or service bookings — you need to think about this before the build starts, not at the end. Adding a payment layer to a site that was not designed to have one is fiddly and sometimes means rebuilding sections from scratch.
For most small businesses taking card payments online, Stripe is the sensible choice. It is well-documented, trusted by customers, and straightforward to integrate. Fees are around 1.5% plus 20p per transaction for UK cards under the standard pricing. You will need a verified Stripe account set up in your business name — allow a day or two for that if you have not done it before.
If you need appointment bookings rather than direct payments, tools like Calendly (free tier is often sufficient to start) or Acuity Scheduling (around £14 a month) can be embedded into a site without much complexity. Again, know which one you want before the build begins — the integration looks different depending on the tool.
Online shops need a slightly longer conversation. Whether that is WooCommerce on WordPress, Shopify, or something else depends on volume, product type, and how much you want to manage yourself. That is a whole separate article, but the short version is: know roughly how many products you are listing, whether you need inventory management, and how you plan to handle delivery and returns before anyone writes a line of code.
Your Google Business Profile: set it up before you launch, not after.
A Google Business Profile is separate from your website, but the two work together. When someone in Sandwich types "electrician near me", what comes up first is almost always a Google Business Profile, not an organic search result. If you do not have one — or if it is unclaimed, incomplete, or pointing to the wrong address — your new website will do less work than it should.
Setting up a profile is free and takes about forty minutes if you have your details to hand: business name, address (or service area if you are mobile), phone number, category, and opening hours. Verification is usually a postcard to your trading address, which arrives within five working days. Start this process the week before your site launches so the two go live at roughly the same time.
I have written a fuller guide on getting your Google Business Profile right for local trade if you want the detail, but the core point here is: do not leave it as an afterthought.
The short checklist before you brief anyone.
Before you speak to a developer — me or anyone else — work through this list:
- Domain registered and in your own account, renewals confirmed
- One clear goal defined for each main page
- Rough copy drafted for every page (Google Doc is fine)
- 20+ real photos ready at full resolution
- Decision made on whether you need payments, bookings, or an online shop — and which tool
- Stripe account created if you need to take card payments
- Google Business Profile claimed and verification started
- Any existing brand assets gathered: logo file (SVG or high-res PNG preferred), brand colours if you have them
None of this takes more than a day or two of focused effort. Most of it is an afternoon. Do it first, and whatever you spend on the build — whether that is £500 or £5,000 — goes further and faster.