Some clients come in with a folder. Brand guidelines, color hex codes, approved copy, their previous designer’s notes, and a very clear mental picture of what they want. They know what font their logo uses. They have opinions about button shapes.
Then there are clients on the other end of that spectrum entirely. No logo. Barely a color. “Look, this is so out of my depth. It’s ridiculous. I need you to just build it.” They don’t have content. They don’t have anything.
We’ve worked with both. We’ve built great websites from both starting points. And the list of things we need from either client — the real, short list — is roughly the same.
That says something about what web designers need from clients. And it’s probably not what other companies have been asking you for.
The real short list
Here’s what we need: your story and your trust. That’s the list.
Your story means the basics — what you do, who you serve, what makes your business different from the next one in your category. Most people already have this. They’ve been running the business. They’ve been having the sales conversation. They know who calls them and why. If you have a logo, great. If you have colors, great. If you have an existing website we’re replacing, even better — that gives us more to work from. If you have none of that, we work with what the conversation gives us, and the conversation gives us more than people expect.
What surfaces in a 45-minute call isn’t a list of deliverables. It’s the texture of the business — the language the owner uses, what they’re proud of, what they’re embarrassed about, which clients they love working with and which ones they quietly wish would stop calling. All of that informs the site. Not because we’re going to put any of it on the homepage, but because it tells us what kind of site this person needs and what kind of client they’re going to be. That’s the intake. That’s the short list in action.
Most people fall kind of in the middle of the spectrum between the hyper-prepared and the “I have nothing.” They’re coming from an existing website. They have some content ideas. We’ll usually flag what’s missing — “hey, you’re missing this page. It’s really important for Google Search and your clients to understand you better, that kind of thing.” We build out a full package and go from there.
The last time we went over a month on a build was only because we were waiting on something critical from the client. That just doesn’t happen. We are not talking about this massive project time schedule. We move quickly because we need a short list of things to move — and we have them.
What web designers need from clients — and what shouldn’t be on the list
Any company that’s asking a lot from their clients is not going to get websites built very fast, especially if they have multiple checkpoints. The speed at which we execute — along with the precision with which we deliver, on both the side you don’t see (the development) and the side you do see (the design) — is something we’re proud of. It’s also something that requires us to keep the client’s obligation very small.
The filter is simple: does this item on the intake list require the client to do something they shouldn’t have to do? Does it hurt them? Does it pain them in some way? Not in a “this is technically difficult” way, but in a “I don’t even know where to begin with this and now I feel like I’m doing homework” way. If the answer is yes, we absorb it. That’s our job.
The clearest example is the screen share. There have been screen shares where it’s taken over 20 minutes to get someone connected. They can’t find the button. The link opens the wrong browser. The audio cuts. We stay on the call and work through it. We have succeeded every time. Does it wear on us eventually? Yeah, maybe a little. But it’s more important to serve the client than it is to serve yourself.
We are in the service business, aren’t we?
That reframe matters more than people realize. Because the question isn’t just “is this item on the checklist reasonable.” The question is: who is this checklist for? If an item exists because it makes the company’s process easier rather than because the client needs to provide it — it shouldn’t be there. The company built a process that creates friction for the client and then transferred that friction onto the client. That’s not a partnership. That’s an administrative burden with a contract attached.
What we don’t ask for: approved copy, stock photos, a completed creative brief, a filled-out 20-field questionnaire, a PDF of your previous marketing materials. The conversation is the intake. Everything else is us doing our job.
Almost every client is worried they’re not ready
That’s almost every client. Not some. Almost every one.
They’re worried they’re not going to be able to get on the screen share. They’re worried they’re not going to have enough information. They’re worried we’re not going to be able to do what needs to be done with what they have. They’re worried that what we’re saying isn’t even true — because if it seems too good to be true, it often is. That’s what we’re taught.
That’s the biggest hurdle we typically have to overcome — it just seems too good to be true. All of it. From the White Glove Service to the pricing to how we deliver to the execution. The speed. The price. One person. No contracts. It stacks up and the brain says: this doesn’t compute.
That’s exactly why we built the case studies. We’ve got six awesome case studies on the site right now and they’re growing every month — different verticals, different starting points, same delivery. More proof of us doing what we say we’re going to do. You should be suspicious of anything that sounds too good to be true. Ask for evidence. Get the evidence and then don’t move until you are satisfied by the evidence. That’s not just how to evaluate us. That’s how to evaluate anyone.
The other piece of the “I’m not ready” worry is the one about preparation specifically — the fear that the folder isn’t full enough. And that worry is almost never accurate. Clients who come in with very little end up building great websites because the conversation fills in what the folder didn’t have. What we need doesn’t live in a file. It lives in how you talk about your business, what you emphasize, what you leave out. The folder is a convenience. The conversation is the source.
The one thing that separates a good project from a great one
Freedom.
Freedom for us to do what we think is best for you. It’s literally the trust fall. If you do the trust fall with us — metaphorically — and allow us to do what’s best for you, you will have the best end result. The more you get out of the way, the better your end result will be.
That’s not a dismissal of your input. The colors, the look, the feel, the things that make the site yours — those come from you and they matter. It’s your website. It’s not ours. But the structure decisions, the page architecture, what a first-time visitor needs to see in the first five seconds, what should be featured and what should be buried — let us do our thing. You’re the expert at what you do. In our business, we’re the expert at what we do.
Here’s what the trust fall looks like in practice: less back-and-forth on decisions we’ve made correctly hundreds of times. A faster pace through the build. An end product that reflects what the business needs rather than what the owner pictured when they first started imagining the site. Those two things are often different — what a client wants and what the site needs — and the gap between them is where a lot of mediocre websites get built. When a client hands off the structural decisions, we can close that gap. When they hold onto them, we build what they asked for, which is almost always good. Just not great.
Clients who grip the process tightly get good websites. Clients who do the trust fall get great ones. That pattern has held across hundreds of builds and it still holds. A lot of people ask us whether they should be managing their web designer — and the honest answer is that the less you feel the need to, the better the outcome usually is.
If a company’s intake checklist has 20 items, read that carefully
Twenty items. That company wouldn’t be in business.
If it feels overwhelming for someone to get started on a job, maybe there’s something wrong — and it’s not with the client. A 20-item intake checklist isn’t a sign of thoroughness. It’s a sign that the company hasn’t figured out how to work without it. Every item on that list that a client has to complete is a task the company doesn’t know how to do themselves, or doesn’t want to take the time to do. They’ve taken their operational dependency and translated it into a client requirement.
We’ve built the initial mockup without anything from the client. The client didn’t even have a website. All we had was color direction and we did it. A simple text logo. A real site. From one conversation.
It works because through the conversation, whether people know it or not, a lot of clues are given about the kind of person they are and what they’re looking for in their communication style. The words they use for their service. The stories they tell unprompted. What they bring up twice. What they seem hesitant about. If you dig into those things, you can learn a lot about the way the site is supposed to feel before a single question is formally asked.
That skill isn’t something a new designer has, and it shouldn’t be expected of them. It develops over hundreds of builds, hundreds of onboarding calls, hundreds of moments where you learned that this client means something different by “clean” than the last one did, or that “professional” to a roofing contractor looks nothing like “professional” to an estate attorney. You can’t put that skill into a checklist. You earn it over time. And once you have it, the 20-item checklist starts looking like what it is: a compensation for not knowing how to listen.
So when a business owner is reading a new company’s intake list and it runs 20 items long, the right question isn’t “do I have all of this?” The right question is: why does this company need all of this from me to get started?
If they can’t answer that clearly, you have your answer.
What web designers need from clients — and what they should just handle themselves
The short version of this whole post: not much. Your story and your trust. Everything else should be on us.
That’s hands-off website design in plain terms — the weight of getting the site built doesn’t land on you. It lands on us. You bring who you are and what your business does. We turn that into something people find and something people trust when they land on it.
The 20-item checklist exists at companies where the client is doing part of the company’s job. Where the intake form is how the company learns anything about you, because nobody is going to be on a call listening for the things you don’t know to say. The form is efficient for them. It’s work for you. And the site it produces reflects that — it answers the questions on the form and nothing more.
Our intake is a conversation. We listen for the things that tell us who this business is and what its site needs to do. What’s included in what we handle is more than most clients expect, which is part of why the whole thing sounds too good to be true when they first hear it. The evidence is on the site. Look at the case studies. Talk to people who’ve been with us for years. Then decide.
You’re not being asked to manage this process. You’re being asked to show up and talk about your business.
You already know how to do that. Bring that, and let us handle the rest. Start with a conversation — we’ll take it from there.
Frequently asked questions about working with a web design company
Do I need a logo before I can start a website project?
No. We’ve started builds with clients who had nothing but a name and a color direction. If you have a logo, we’ll use it. If you don’t, we can work with a text-based logo or build from what you have. Not having a logo has never held up a build here.
What if I don’t have any content written for my site?
We don’t expect clients to hand us finished copy. Most of the content for your site comes out of the onboarding conversation — what you do, who you serve, why someone should call you and not the next person in your category. We build from that. If you have specific things you want the site to say, great. If you’re starting from scratch, so are a lot of our clients, and it works out fine.
How long does a typical build take?
Typically a few weeks. The last time a build stretched past a month was because we were waiting on something critical from the client — and that just doesn’t happen here. We move fast because we’re not waiting on a long checklist to come back filled out. The conversation gives us what we need and we go.
What if I’m not very tech-savvy? Will that slow things down?
It won’t slow things down, and it won’t make the project harder. We’ve navigated 20-minute screen shares, walked clients through every step, and built great sites with people who weren’t sure what a domain was when we started. Your technical comfort level is not a prerequisite. That’s our department — and we mean that completely. You don’t need to know how your website works to have one that works well.
Is it really true that you need very little from me to get started?
Roughly, yes. The things we need — your business details, what you want people to do when they land on your site, your brand colors if you have them — come out of one conversation. The rest is on us. The checklist at other companies exists to make their process easier. Our job is to make yours easier. Those two things don’t always point in the same direction, and we’ve chosen yours.