Ask any agency what delays projects and the answer is the same: content. Not design rounds, not development — the words and pictures the client was going to send. The build reaches the point where it needs real text, placeholder copy goes in "temporarily", and three weeks disappear.
It is not laziness. Writing about your own business is genuinely hard, it is nobody's actual job, and it always loses to the work that pays this week. The fix is to make it small and ordered rather than one large task called "content".
Decide who is writing before anything starts
This single question causes more overruns than any other, because both sides assume the other is handling it. Settle it explicitly, in the agreement, as part of what belongs in a web design contract.
- You write it. Cheapest, and only cheaper if you actually do it. Be honest about whether you will.
- A copywriter writes it from an interview with you. Costs money and almost always saves more than it costs in elapsed time.
- They rewrite what you supply. A good middle: you provide rough notes, they make them read properly.
- It is migrated from the old site. Fine for some pages, but someone must still read every one and decide what stays.
Paying for copywriting is usually cheaper than a project idle for six weeks. Work out what six weeks of delay costs you before deciding it is too expensive.
Write the page list first, and keep it short
Before any writing, list the pages. Not the design — just the pages, and what each one is for. Most small business sites need fewer than people assume:
- Home
- One page per service you actually sell
- About
- Contact
- Proof — portfolio, case studies or reviews
- The policy pages your business needs
Resist adding pages because the navigation looks thin. An empty page is worse than no page, and you can add more once the site is live. If a page will not have real content by launch, leave it out of this build.
Start with the pages that earn
The order matters because it decides what gets written while enthusiasm lasts. Write the service pages first — they are the ones customers arrive on and the ones that convert. The home page is easier to write once the services exist, because it mostly summarises them.
Leave About until later. It feels like the natural starting point and it is the hardest page to write, which is exactly why so many projects stall on it.
What a service page needs
For each service, answer these in order. If you can answer them in an email to a customer, you can answer them on the page:
- What is it, in one sentence a stranger would understand?
- Who is it for, and who is it not for?
- What problem does it solve?
- What does the process look like, step by step?
- What does it cost, or what does it depend on?
- How long does it take?
- What do they need to provide?
- What happens next — the one action you want them to take.
Write it as if explaining to a customer on the phone. That voice is almost always better than the one people reach for when they sit down to write "website copy" — which tends to produce "We pride ourselves on delivering bespoke solutions" and persuades nobody.
Your inbox is the brief
The best source material already exists. Go through the last month of customer emails and messages and write down every question asked more than once.
Each one is a paragraph the website is missing. This single exercise produces better content than any amount of staring at a blank page, and it has the useful side effect of reducing the questions you answer by hand afterwards.
Photographs, honestly
Stock photos of people in unfamiliar offices shaking hands say nothing about you, and everybody recognises them. Real photographs of ordinary quality beat polished generic ones nearly every time.
- Your actual team, your actual premises, your actual work.
- Products or completed jobs — our guide to product photography covers shooting these with a phone.
- Before and after shots, where the work has a before.
- A photograph of whoever answers the phone. It helps more than people expect.
If you genuinely have nothing and cannot arrange a shoot, say so early. A designer can build around a text-led layout if they know in week one; discovering it in week six means redesigning.
The boring things that block launch
These are not content, but they stall launches just as often and nobody lists them:
- Domain registrar login — and confirmation that the domain is in your business's name.
- Current hosting access, if the site is moving.
- Analytics and Search Console access, or a decision to start fresh.
- Your Google Business Profile login.
- Logo files in a usable format — see what files you should get with a logo.
- Brand colours and fonts, or permission to choose them.
- The exact business name, address and phone as they should appear everywhere.
- Social profile links, checked — a dead link in the footer sits on every page.
- Who receives form submissions, and a second address as backup.
Gather these in week one. Every one of them has delayed a launch by days because the person who knew the password was on leave.
If you are replacing an existing site
Do not assume everything carries over. Before anything is switched off:
- List every page on the old site and decide: keep, rewrite, merge or drop.
- Find which pages actually get traffic. Pages with real visitors need an equivalent on the new site, even if you were planning to drop them.
- Map every old URL to a new one. This is not optional — skipping it can lose years of rankings in a weekend, which redesigning without losing SEO covers in detail.
- Save a full copy of the old site before it goes.
A schedule that works
- Week one: page list agreed, logins gathered, decision made on who writes.
- Week two: service pages drafted — rough is fine, complete matters more than polished.
- Week three: home and proof pages, photographs taken or chosen.
- Week four: About, policies, and one read-through of everything by someone who did not write it.
Give each page a named owner and a date. "The team will send content" means nobody will. One person, one page, one deadline works; a shared folder and good intentions does not.
Good enough is the right standard
Content written and live beats content perfect and pending. A page can be improved after launch — that is the advantage a website has over a brochure — and a site that is three months late because the About page is being refined has cost far more than an imperfect paragraph ever would.
Write it, publish it, and fix the weakest page next month with the benefit of seeing what people actually read. Our small business website checklist covers what to confirm before it goes live, and writing a design brief covers what the designer needs alongside the words.
If you would rather hand the whole thing over, content is part of how we build a website rather than a stage you are left to complete. To talk it through, contact us.
