Have your services listed, your area defined, your prices decided, usable photographs, your logo files, and access to your domain. Missing content is the single most common cause of a project running late.

Why projects run late

Ask any web designer and the answer is the same. Not design revisions, not technical problems. Waiting for material from the client.

The pattern is consistent: the build is finished in three weeks, then sits for two months while somebody tries to find time to write the services page and take some photographs.

The frustrating part is that all of it could have been assembled before the project started, when there was no deadline pressure and no half-built site waiting.

An afternoon of preparation reliably saves several weeks.

The list of what you actually do

Sounds trivial. It is where most of the confusion lives.

Write down every service, in the words a customer would use rather than your trade's terms. Then mark which ones you actually want more of.

That second step matters. Most businesses list everything they are capable of, which produces a site advertising the low-margin work they would rather stop doing.

Also note what you do not do. The site that says plainly it does not handle a particular thing saves you the enquiries you would decline anyway.

Where you work

Specific rather than approximate.

The towns and neighbourhoods you cover. How far you will travel before it stops being worth it. Whether there is a surcharge beyond a certain point.

Businesses are vague about this because they do not want to rule anything out, and the vagueness costs them. Somebody two towns over cannot tell whether to call, so they call somebody else.

What it costs

The uncomfortable one, and the decision needs making before the site is written rather than after.

Three options: publish actual prices, publish ranges or a starting figure, or publish nothing and explain what drives the cost.

All three are defensible. What does not work is deciding halfway through the build, because the whole page has to be rewritten around it.

If you are unsure, a starting-from figure with an honest explanation of what moves it is the version that suits most trades.

Photographs, which is the real bottleneck

The item that delays more projects than everything else combined.

What you need: finished work, several angles, in reasonable light. A photograph of you or your team. The van, if you have one. The premises, if customers visit.

What counts as usable: taken on a recent phone, in daylight, held steady, of something actually finished and tidied. That is a low bar and most businesses cannot meet it from their existing camera roll, because the photographs were taken as records rather than as pictures.

The fix is booking two hours to go and take some, deliberately, before the project starts. Not after, when a half-built site is waiting.

If you genuinely have nothing, say so early. There are ways to build around it, and they need deciding at the start.

The words, and who writes them

Worth settling at the start because it changes the quote and the timeline.

Three arrangements. You write it and somebody edits. Somebody interviews you and writes it. Or somebody writes it from your existing material without talking to you, which produces the generic pages you see everywhere.

The second is usually best value for a trade. An hour on the phone answering questions produces better material than three evenings staring at a blank page, because talking about your own work is easy and writing about it is not.

What it costs: an hour of your time and a line on the invoice. What it saves: the two months the project would otherwise sit waiting.

If you do intend to write it yourself, block the time now and treat it as a deadline. Content written in the gaps between jobs does not get finished.

The files nobody can find

The domain one is worth chasing now rather than at launch. A site cannot go live at an address nobody can access, and recovering a domain registered years ago by somebody who has left takes weeks.

Test it before you assume you have it. Log in, see the domain listed, and check the contact address on the registration is one you still read. An account you can reach with a password reset to a dead mailbox is not access.

A worked example

A cabinet maker with a three-week build that took four months.

The design was approved in week two. Then: no service list, because the business had never written one down and could not agree on how to describe two of them. No photographs, because everything on the phone was taken mid-install with tools in shot. No decision on prices. And a domain registered in 2011 by a friend who had moved abroad.

Each was individually small. Together they cost fourteen weeks, and the site launched with three stock photographs because the shoot never happened.

The same business, preparing first, would have spent perhaps six hours: an hour on services, two on photographs, an hour deciding pricing, and two chasing the domain.

The afternoon that prevents it

  1. Write the service list, marked for what you want more of.
  2. Define the area, in place names.
  3. Decide the pricing approach.
  4. Book two hours for photographs.
  5. Find the logo files and the domain login.
  6. Write three sentences about why somebody should use you, which will be rewritten and gives the writer something to work from.

None of that requires a designer, and all of it is easier before there is a deadline attached.

Keep it all in one folder rather than scattered across email, a phone and a filing cabinet. The person building the site will ask for the same six things, and having them together turns a fortnight of back-and-forth into one message.

Whether you are assembling this for somebody else or for yourself is covered in building it yourself or paying somebody.

Frequently asked questions

Why do website projects run late?

Waiting for material from the client, not design or technical problems. The build finishes and then sits while somebody finds time to write and photograph.

What should the service list contain?

Every service in the customer's words, marked for which ones you want more of, plus what you do not do so you avoid enquiries you would decline.

How specific should the service area be?

Place names, how far you will travel, and any surcharge. Vagueness costs you, because somebody two towns over cannot tell whether to call.

What counts as a usable photograph?

Finished work, several angles, daylight, held steady, tidied. Most camera rolls fail this because the photos were taken as records rather than pictures.

Which missing file causes the most trouble?

The domain login. A site cannot launch at an address nobody can access, and recovering an old registration takes weeks.

How long does preparation take?

About six hours: an hour on services, two on photographs, an hour on pricing, two chasing access. It reliably saves several weeks.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

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