How to prepare content before ordering a website

A clear one-paragraph description of what you sell and to whom. Even if the agency will polish it, you have to write the first version.

A list of your services or products with short descriptions. Two to four sentences each is enough at this stage.

An about-us draft. Who you are, when the company started, why it exists. Real, not generic.

Contact details: phone, email, address, business hours, social profiles. Decide which to show publicly.

Real photos of your team, office, products, or work. Phone photos in good light beat polished stock images. Allocate a day for photography if you do not have anything.

A logo file in vector format (SVG or AI), not just a low-resolution PNG pulled from a social profile.

Brand colours and fonts if you already use them. If not, decide whether you want the agency to propose them.

Examples of your past work, projects, or results, with permission to publish them.

A list of pages you want. Start simple: home, services, about, contact. Add only the pages you have a reason for.

The action you want visitors to take. A call, a form, a purchase, a booking. Every page should drive toward it.

A short list of frequently asked questions. These often become section headings, FAQ blocks, or trust-building content.

Three to five websites you like and three to five you actively dislike. Note what works and what does not. Specific feedback gives a designer something to work with.

One sentence on the impression you want the site to leave: trustworthy, modern, friendly, technical, premium. Pick the closest two, not all of them.

Any rules you must follow: industry regulations, brand guidelines, parent-company restrictions.

Languages. Estonian only, plus Russian, plus English. Each language roughly doubles content work, so the answer matters.

Domain. Register it before development starts, ideally before design. Late changes cost time and SEO.

Who will own and update the site after launch. If you want to edit it yourself, that affects the platform choice.

Budget for ongoing work. Maintenance, content updates, SEO. Plan it now, not after the invoice for launch arrives.

If preparing all of the above feels like a project of its own, ask the agency to include a content workshop in the first phase. A few hours of structured interviews can replace weeks of solo writing for many small businesses.

Either way, the principle holds: content drives the build. The clearer your materials going in, the faster, cheaper, and better the site comes out.

Before any copy, put the legal facts in one document and send it with the brief. Agencies lose days chasing these one by one.

• •Legal name exactly as registered, including OÜ.
• •Registry code.
• •VAT number, or a clear note that the company is not VAT-registered.
• •Registered address, and the address to show to customers if it is different.
• •Public phone and email, and the languages in which you can actually answer.
• •Links to the profiles you keep alive. Leave out the ones you abandoned.

For e-residents one more line helps: your time zone and working hours. It decides what the contact page can honestly promise.

A shop for the Estonian market depends on third parties, and each of them signs a contract with your company, not with the agency.

Payments. Montonio and Maksekeskus provide bank links for Swedbank, SEB, LHV, Coop and other banks, Stripe covers international cards. All of them verify the company and its owners before activating the account, and some ask to see a working site with terms and contact details first. Apply as soon as the domain is decided.

Delivery. Omniva, SmartPosti and DPD parcel lockers each need a business customer agreement and access keys that the developer enters into the shop.

Texts that only you can approve: terms of sale, returns and the withdrawal right for consumers, delivery times and prices. A template gives the skeleton, the numbers and promises are yours, and a lawyer's review is money well spent.

Product data in a spreadsheet: name, description, price with and without VAT, stock code, weight, photos named to match. Filling a shop from a tidy sheet takes hours. Filling it from emails and chat messages takes weeks.

The existing advice is to decide the languages early. The next step is to decide how each version gets written.

Choose one source language, the one you think in, and finish it completely before translating. Translating drafts means paying for every later edit three times.

Name a person per language who signs off the final text. For Estonian that should be a native speaker: machine-translated Estonian is noticed at once and costs trust with exactly the local customers the version was made for.

Agree on what is not translated at launch. It is fine to publish the blog in one language and the service pages in three, as long as the menu does not lead visitors to empty pages.