What we need
from you.

[Written by the Gleed studio · Last checked 31.08.2026]

1. [01]

   Why this is published before you pay

   A build does not usually stall on anything technical. It stalls on a photograph nobody can find, a paragraph nobody has written, and a login that belongs to somebody who left. Every studio knows this and most of them send the list after the deposit, which is the point at which it reads as a demand rather than as preparation.

   It is here instead, because it changes what you decide. If you can see the whole list before you pay, you can start collecting this week, and you can tell honestly whether the date you want is a date you can keep. The studio’s clock is only fair because it stops while it waits on you — the cap on your package counts working time and not the days somebody spent looking for the logo — and a rule like that is only useful if you know in advance what you are being waited on for.

2. [02]

   The words

   The largest item and the one most often underestimated. A designer can arrange text they do not have; a site cannot go live on it.

   • What you sell, in your own words. Written the way you would say it to a customer standing in front of you, not the way you think a website should sound. Half a page is enough to start.
   • A list of the services or the products. With prices if you publish them, and with the ones you would rather sell marked. A price list you keep for the accountant is fine — it does not need tidying first.
   • The facts a customer looks for. Address, opening hours, the area you cover, the phone number that is answered, whether you deliver, whether you need an appointment.
   • Anything you are legally required to state. Licence numbers, registrations, terms you already use. If it is on your invoices it probably belongs on the site.

   If the words do not exist, say so at the brief rather than promising them for Monday. Writing them is work, it can be quoted, and a build waiting on copy that never arrives is the most expensive way for either of us to discover that.

3. [03]

   The pictures

   • The logo, in the best form you have. The original file from whoever drew it is ideal — it can be printed at any size without softening. A large image is workable. A logo cut out of an existing website is the one to avoid, and if that is all that exists, say so early: redrawing it is a small job scheduled in advance and a crisis on the last day.
   • Photographs of the real thing. Your room, your work, your staff, your food. Straight off a recent phone is fine and often better than stock: a visitor can tell the difference between your counter and a photograph of somebody else’s, and so can a regular customer.
   • Anything you are not allowed to use. A photograph a supplier gave you for a catalogue, an image from a brand you resell. Flag it, and it is either cleared or replaced before it is on a page in your name.

   What is genuinely missing gets a plain placeholder that is named as one in the handover, so nothing ships pretending to be finished.

4. [04]

   The keys

   The shortest list and the one with the longest tail if it goes wrong, because a registrar or a platform can take days to answer and neither of us can hurry it.

   • The domain, or the decision to buy one. If you have it, we need access to the account it is registered in — or you point it yourself, which is a five-minute change we can talk you through. If you do not, it is bought with you or provided, and either way it ends up registered in your name.
   • Whatever the current site runs on. Hosting, the existing platform, the email that is served from the same domain. The last of those is the one that hurts if it is missed, so it gets asked about first.
   • The accounts with history in them. Analytics, the ad account, the business profile, the mailing list. These stay yours and keep their history; the studio is added to them rather than recreating them, because a new analytics property starts your data over and nobody gets those months back.

   Access is granted to accounts in your name, never moved into ours. That is the same rule from the other side of the ownership question, and it is why there is nothing to unwind if you leave.

5. [05]

   One person who can say yes

   Name them at the brief. Not because a studio wants fewer opinions — gather as many as you like — but because a revision round ends when somebody decides it has ended, and a round with three approvers and no decider does not end at all.

   It matters more here than it might elsewhere, because the rounds are written down rather than open-ended. Marker and Atlas print a revision count on their own rows — one page, one revision round; two revision rounds — and where a row does not publish one, as Compass and Meridian do not, the count is written into the quote before anything starts. Either way it is a number you agreed to, and it is spent by whoever is answering.

   The practical version: collect everybody’s comments, sit with them for an hour, send one list. Two people sending contradictory notes on the same afternoon costs a round and neither of them gets what they wanted.

6. [06]

   What happens if something is missing

   Nothing dramatic, and nothing silent. Work starts on what has arrived, the missing piece is named in writing, and the clock stops on the part that is waiting rather than on the whole build. You are told which item it is, not that we are blocked.

   Two things do not happen. Nothing is invented to fill a gap — no borrowed photographs of a business that is not yours, no written-out claims you never made. And no missing item quietly becomes extra work on the invoice: anything beyond the signed scope is quoted and agreed before it begins, which is a term in the offer rather than a courtesy.

   If you can collect the words and the pictures this week, you are ready for a brief. It takes about four minutes and comes back with a package and a fixed quote — the packages are here if you would rather see what each one covers first.