List of things your designer needs before they start your project:

So you’ve decided that you need a designer for your business? Good move! But now what? How do you get started? Well once you’ve found yourself a good design agency (like us), your designer is going to need a whole lot of stuff from you before they get going on your project. We’re going to break down exactly what it is that we need. 

It may seem like a lot and you may think “but surely I can just send that later” – and you could. But having all the information and content ready at the start of a project really speeds up the process and avoids frustration on your side as well as your designers. We’ve had projects held up and deadlines missed because clients don’t send the necessary content when it’s requested. Having all the information up front also ensures that you get your website that much faster!

Cue the long list of information required…

Here’s a lil checklist we made that you can download and tick off as you go along. 

Downloadable Checklist  

All design (including mediums like print design)

Design

First up is all the designy stuff – this is the information we need from any and all clients. Whether we’re doing some design work for you like a logo or company profile, or we’re doing an informational website, or the whole shebang of an e-commerce site – we need this from everyone. It’s the design basics.

Look and Feel 

We’ll need a bit of direction for how you would like your website to look and feel. Would you like it to look very modern or very creative, would you like to keep it monotone and have the content be the focus?

Knowing your look and feel gives your designer a good idea of what you have envisioned. 

Read our blog post about look and feel

Logo

Your designer will need your logo in a high resolution file. Your logo will certainly go on the website and it needs to be a good quality image – if your logo of all things is pixelated or grainy your website is not going to give off a good impression (even if the rest of the design is amazing).The preferred file type for your designer to receive the logo in is PNG.

‘And if I don’t have a logo yet?’ – Well then we’d suggest that you get one designed before starting your website design. Your logo is at the centre of your brand image and ideally you want to be certain of your brand image before you get a website. Say you get your whole website done and later realise, actually you don’t like the pink in your logo you’d rather have it blue. Well, that change is going to have to apply to your website too! Which is going to cost your designer time and you money. 

We can design an awesome logo for your brand and then apply all the elements to your website. 

Fonts 

For websites, it’s best to use Google Fonts. It’s free for commercial use which makes it the safest and most accessible choice. Google Fonts are also just the easiest fonts to work with in general when it comes to downloading them for design projects or sharing them. You can browse Google Fonts here.

It’s also helpful if you are able to include the size and weight of your chosen font. Additionally, if you have different fonts for your headings, sub-headings and body copy please include all of those as well. So we can make your website extra pretty.

Colour Pallet 

This is a big one, knowing the exact colours you want on your website can save your designer from changing it 100 times before you’re happy. HEX codes are preferred as this ensures that we’re talking about the exact same colour and not just one that looks similar. 

You can find your HEX codes here.

Copy 

This is all the text that you want on your website. When providing us with all this copy it would be helpful to know where you would like it to go and under which headings. If you don’t have copy yet or you are unsure if your copy is grammatically correct, we have a copywriter on our team who can write it all for you. We’ve also got a team of copy checkers who can check and edit your already written copy

Images 

When it comes to your images, the higher the resolution the better. Like with the logo – if it’s pixelated or grainy your website isn’t gonna look that good. Please send all your images over email, Whatsapp compresses images and we can’t download them as high quality as they were sent.

Inspiration 

If you’ve come across any websites or even just design elements that have made you go “WOW” then send those through! We can use that as a base for what you do and don’t like. 

Informational site

If you just want to inform your viewers that you sell amazing cupcakes and where to buy them but don’t want to actually sell those cupcakes on your website, then you will need an informational site.

What you’ll need:

All of the above PLUS

Official Business name

This seems obvious, but we need to know if your business name needs to be displayed with any legal titles or symbols like ™, LLC, Inc. etc. 

Contact details to be displayed

This includes the primary phone number for your business that you want visitors to the site to use as well as any business email addresses that visitors can use to contact you. 

It’s also beneficial for us to have a list of contacts of people on the project in your company so that if we can’t reach one person with an update or query, we can reach another. 

Hours of Operation

This information would fall under copy but is often forgotten. 

C-panel logins

You can get these from your hosting provider.

WordPress logins

You can get these from your C-panel.

Links 

Any links that you would like on your website such as to social media accounts, emails, other websites you would like your site to link to etc.

Company Profile 

If you have a company profile, it could help us to understand your business even further and it may have a lot of the copy that you would like included on your website. 

Terms and Conditions 

If necessary for your business.

You can also send any other information or documents that you think will be beneficial for us to have. If you aren’t sure if we need something, send it anyway. It’s better for us to have too much information to work with than too little. 

E-commerce site

This is the type of site you’ll get if you want to sell those cupcakes to your customers online, regardless of whether or not you are taking payments online. 

What you’ll need:

All of the above PLUS

Excel sheet (that we will send you) with:

• Product names
• Product short descriptions
• Product long descriptions
• Prices
• Sale prices
• Categories

Image links (The exel will show you how to get those links, please follow it carefully)

If you are not using us as your agency please ask your designer how they would like product information set to them. Best bet is Excel because (speaking from experience) it is really hard to upload products when they are all sent on separate sporadic whatsapp messages. Your designer will thank us later.  

Shipping Details:

• Type of service (ie same day delivery or 7 day delivery)
• Pricing in different areas

Return Policies

Payment Gate details:

• Payfast details 
• EFT details
• Details for any other payment gateway you would like to use

Having all of this information and content at the beginning of a project will really speed things up and avoid hiccups along the way. BUT!

If you want a website but don’t have all or any of the above, don’t be scared away! We’re not going to refuse you business and tell you to go figure yourself out. We’ll happily guide you through it all and help you figure it all out.