What do you provide to a web designer?
To get a good website quickly, you provide four things: who you are and what you do, your logo and brand colors, photos of your work or your business, and three examples of websites you like yourself.
The sharper you provide these, the sharper the first version becomes. Vagueness here costs both you and the designer time, and therefore money.
1. A short story about your business
Not a marketing text, but answers to four questions: what does your business make or do, who is it for, where are you based, and how are you different from the competition. Five lines per question is enough.
If you find it hard, think of how you would explain it to someone at a birthday party asking what you do. Those words often work better on your website than formal business language.
2. Logo and brand colors
Provide your logo in a vector format if you have it (SVG, EPS or AI), otherwise in the highest resolution PNG you have. Also useful: your brand colors, ideally as hex codes or Pantone, but one screenshot of your house style is fine too.
No logo or house style yet? Also fine. Then I use a neutral setup and we agree whether we later have a logo made by someone good at that.
3. Photos of your work or your business
Photos convince faster than copy. For a small business: a few good photos of your workshop, employees at work, or finished projects. For a freelancer: a portrait photo and photos of previous work.
No professional photos? A good smartphone does more than you think, as long as the light is right. What you should not do: stock photos of other welders or warehouses. Customers see straight through that.
4. Three examples of websites you like
No more than three, and it does not have to be from your own industry. What works: sites where you think 'that is how I would want to come across too'. That may just as well be a bakery while you work in steel. It is about feeling, not copying.
Why three? With one you get a copy, with ten it gets confusing. Three gives just enough direction without the designer having to guess.
No logo or photos yet? This is how we handle that
At Sjems I work with what you do have. No logo yet? I set up a text-based wordmark that fits your business, or we arrange a logo designer together.
No photos or video yet? I arrange that for €299 ex VAT as an add-on with your package. One photographer/videographer, both in one person, comes on location for a half day wherever in the Netherlands you are, and you receive the selected and edited shots. You use them in your website and everywhere else too, from social media to print.
The point is: you do not have to be perfectly prepared to start. It is smart to know what is missing, so you can fill it in without the project getting stuck.
What you do not have to provide
No ready-made website copy. That we write together based on how customers actually search for your business, and that works better than you puzzling over it up front. No technical design brief. No rigid briefing document.
Welcome instead: your opinions, your frustrations about the website you have now, and what you think of your competitor. That kind of input often surfaces more than formal briefings.
Practical experience at DCT B.V., a supplier of welding tables and clamping tools for the steel industry. Daily conversations with business owners about their websites, what works and what does not. Complemented by hands-on experience building websites for small businesses through Sjems.