What Information to Prepare Before Ordering a Website

Before you order a website, prepare five things: the basic texts about your business (who you are, what you do, for whom), 10–20 real photos, your list of services with prices, 2–3 examples of websites you like and the technical access details — first of all your domain, if you already own one. With these, the first conversation with the agency takes 30 minutes instead of three weeks of emails, and the project heads in the right direction from day one.

Here is a secret from inside the trade: most websites do not run late because of design. They run late because the project is 90% done, and the last 10% — the client's texts and photos — sit for months in a folder called "to send for the website". We are the MPO Web Studio team from the Cluj / Cluj-Napoca area in Romania, we work remotely with businesses across the whole country, and we wrote this guide so you never end up there.

What texts should you prepare?

Nobody is asking for literature. Open the notes app on your phone and answer five questions in your own words:

• Who are you and how long have you been doing this? — two or three sentences, as if telling a customer at the counter
• What do you do, concretely? — the list of services, no jargon
• For whom? — your typical customer, the area you serve
• Why you, and not the competition? — a guarantee, speed, experience, anything that is true
• What do customers always ask you? — the questions you get on the phone are the perfect FAQ

We rewrite and polish everything anyway. But the difference between "we rewrite your text" and "we invent from scratch" is the difference between a website that sounds like you and one that sounds like a brochure.

What photos are enough to start with?

A visitor can feel within two seconds whether a photo was taken in your workshop or pulled from a stock site — and stock photos convince nobody. Prepare 10–20 real shots: the team, the space, the products, "before and after" work. Simple rules: natural light, a wiped phone lens, no flash. Five good photos beat fifty mediocre ones.

If you have a logo, send it in its original format (a PNG with a transparent background or the designer's file), not a screenshot cropped from Facebook.

Should you display prices on the website?

The same hesitation always comes up here: "if I publish my prices, competitors will copy me." The uncomfortable truth: competitors find out your prices anyway, with a single phone call. The only one left in the dark is the customer — and a customer who cannot find at least a ballpark price leaves for the website where they can. You do not have to publish your entire price list: ranges like "from X" for your main services are enough. Decide before the first conversation what you will show publicly, so the site's structure is designed correctly from the start.

How do website examples help?

Save 2–3 websites you like, from your industry or any other, and note what exactly you like: the colors, the way services are presented, a particular form. Just as valuable is an example you do not like: "I don't want it to look like X" saves an entire round of revisions. Without examples, the designer guesses; with them, they get it right the first time.

What technical access details should you gather?

The boring part that blocks entire launches:

• The domain — where it is registered and who has the username and password; if a former collaborator bought it, write to them today, not in launch week
• Current hosting — if you already have an old website, access to it spares surprises during the move
• Email — do you want addresses on your domain, like contact@yourcompany.com?
• [Google Business Profile](/ro/blog/ce-este-google-business-profile) — if you have a Google business listing, the new website should be linked to it from day one

The short list, for the fridge door

And if you have nothing prepared?

Honestly: it is doable. We ask the questions, structure the texts from your answers, work with the photos you have. But every missing piece adds days of back-and-forth, and in the end those days feel like "the website is taking forever". Preparation is not a requirement — it is a shortcut.

How much does the website cost, once everything is ready?

For the full calculation, we wrote a separate guide on how much a website costs. In short, our prices:

The first step is not the list — it is the message

Do not wait until the folder is complete to write to us. The simplest move is the reverse: ask us for a free demo website on WhatsApp. Tell us in two lines what your business is, we build a first version — and only then, with something concrete in front of you, do you figure out exactly which texts and photos belong in it. The list in this guide stays valid; the demo just makes it much easier to tick off.