You’ve been meaning to contact somebody about the website for months.
But first you should organise the folder. Decide the pages. Write the copy. Understand SEO. Choose a booking system. Work out what the brand should feel like. Find the original logo file. Learn enough design vocabulary to explain why the beige is bothering you.
So the email remains a draft.
Here’s the useful truth. If you could solve all of that alone, you probably wouldn’t need to hire somebody.
A good web designer should help you turn the messy version into a clear plan.
Bring the messy version
You’re allowed to begin with a feeling.
“The business is good, but the website makes it look small.”
“People keep asking questions I thought the site answered.”
“I’m adding a course and don’t know where it belongs.”
“I hate sending the link.”
Those aren’t professional briefs. They’re useful information.
They tell me where trust is breaking, where the business has changed and what the website is failing to carry. We can find the page structure and technical requirements from there.
Five things that are genuinely useful to bring
If you have them, these help:
- A plain description of what you sell and who usually buys it
- The questions people ask before they book or buy
- Links to the tools that must keep working
- A few examples of websites, images or places whose feeling you like
- The practical boundaries: timing, budget, languages, deadlines and anything that can’t change
A voice note is fine. A chaotic folder is fine. Three screenshots with “this bit” circled are fine.
You don’t need to turn your knowledge into a presentation before we’re allowed to discuss it.
What your designer should help you work out
The professional part of the job includes asking better questions.
Which offer deserves the most attention? What does a new visitor need before they’re ready to act? Which content already exists? What can be simplified? What should the website do automatically? What will you need to update yourself?
It also includes telling you when you don’t need something.
You shouldn’t have to choose a plugin because somebody asked, “Which plugin do you want?” You should be able to explain what needs to happen and receive a sensible recommendation.
What not to spend the weekend doing
Please don’t write forty pages of copy because you think the designer needs finished text before speaking to you.
Don’t buy a premium theme just in case. Don’t subscribe to three tools because somebody in a Facebook group recommended them. Don’t commission a separate logo before anyone has looked at the whole business.
And don’t postpone the conversation until you’ve learned the right words.
The words I need are usually ordinary ones: what’s happening, what’s annoying, what matters, what you want people to understand and what a good result would change for you.
A good first conversation should create relief
You don’t need to leave the first conversation with every answer. You should leave with a clearer sense of the real problem, the sensible scope and what happens next.
You should also feel that the person understood you without making you perform expertise in their profession.
Start with: “Hello, I need help with my website.”
It’s a perfectly good opening line. We’ll work out the proper brief together.