The first conversation with an agency isn’t the kickoff. The contract signing isn’t the kickoff. The kickoff is the moment the agency starts building — and what you have ready at that moment determines whether the project runs cleanly or spends its first two weeks waiting on you.
Most project delays that get attributed to the agency start in the kickoff phase. Content arrives in pieces. Brand files are missing or in the wrong format. Stakeholder decisions get deferred. Access credentials need to be tracked down. None of this is catastrophic on its own. All of it compresses the agency’s working time and creates a pattern that bleeds into the rest of the build.
Here’s what to have ready before the first build week begins.
Brand Assets
The agency can’t use your logo, fonts, or colors if they don’t have access to the files in the right format. Before kickoff, gather:
Logo files:
- SVG or EPS format (scalable, not a JPEG of your logo)
- Versions: horizontal, stacked, icon-only, reversed (white on transparent)
- If you don’t have vector files, you either need to recreate them or work with what exists — but tell the agency upfront
Brand colors:
- Hex codes, not color names (“navy” is not a hex code)
- Primary, secondary, and accent colors
- If you don’t have a brand guide, a list of hex codes from your existing materials is sufficient
Fonts:
- Names of any licensed fonts you use
- The license files if they’re self-hosted
- Web-safe alternatives if the primary fonts aren’t web-licensed
If you have a full brand guide — PDF or otherwise — share the whole thing. Even if the agency can only use parts of it, it tells them more about how you think about your identity than a list of hex codes.
Content
Content is where most projects stall. The agency’s ability to build accurate layouts depends on having real content — or at minimum, accurate placeholder content that reflects the actual length and structure of what will go live.
Website copy:
- Text for every page in the agreed scope
- Written in final or near-final form, not “we’ll clean it up later”
- Organized by page, with headings identified
“We’ll write it during the build” is the most common project mistake. By the time the build is 60% complete and the agency is waiting on copy for three key pages, you’ve created a dependency that becomes a delay.
If you need help writing the copy, scope that with the agency before the project starts — not as an afterthought in week three.
Photography and imagery:
- High-resolution photos of your team, office, products, or services as applicable
- Licensing confirmation for any stock images you plan to use
- Preference notes on image style if the agency is sourcing imagery
Videos:
- Embed codes if video is hosted on YouTube or Vimeo
- File uploads if video will be self-hosted (note: self-hosted video on a website is almost never the right approach for performance reasons)
Documents:
- PDFs, menus, price lists, or spec sheets that will be linked or embedded
Access Credentials
The agency needs access to your existing digital infrastructure. Don’t wait until day three of the build to track these down.
At minimum, prepare:
- Domain registrar login — where your domain is registered (GoDaddy, Namecheap, etc.)
- Current hosting account — including FTP/SFTP and database credentials if the agency is migrating an existing site
- Current WordPress admin — if rebuilding a WordPress site
- Google Analytics — editor or admin access, not viewer
- Google Search Console — Owner or Full user access
- Google Ads — if the agency will be connecting conversion tracking
- Any third-party integrations — CRM, booking system, payment gateway, email marketing platform
Create a shared document with all credentials using a password manager or secure note — not a plain-text email. LastPass, 1Password, and Bitwarden all have secure sharing features. Don’t email passwords in plaintext.
If you don’t have admin access to one of these platforms — if it’s held by a previous agency or IT person — resolve that before kickoff, not after.
Say a company discovers at kickoff that its Google Analytics property is owned by an agency it stopped working with years ago, and that agency has gone out of business. Reclaiming the property goes through Google’s support process and takes weeks. If it can’t be reclaimed, the project launches with a new Analytics property, the historical data is gone, and the new site has no fair traffic baseline to be compared against.
Decisions That Need to Be Made Before the Build Starts
There are decisions that, if deferred, will interrupt the build phase. The agency may be able to work around some of them temporarily — but every deferred decision creates a pause point later.
Navigation structure. How many main navigation items? What are they called? If this isn’t settled before design starts, the first design presentation will include navigation decisions that should have been made earlier, and feedback cycles become longer.
Core functionality. If the site needs a contact form, a booking system, a quote calculator, or a members-only area, know this before the project starts. Adding functionality that wasn’t scoped mid-build is the definition of scope creep and will affect both timeline and budget.
Third-party integrations. Which tools need to connect to the site? CRM, live chat, email capture, analytics events, payment processing — these all have technical implications that affect build planning. Disclosing them at kickoff gives the agency time to plan. Disclosing them in week four creates a scramble.
Launch date constraints. Is there a hard deadline — a product launch, a trade show, a campaign start date — that the site needs to be live for? If yes, say so explicitly. It changes how the project is prioritized and sequenced. If there’s no hard deadline, say that too — it allows for a more deliberate pace that often produces better work.
Decision-making authority. Who on your side approves design? Who approves copy? Who approves the final site for launch? If those are different people, the agency needs to know. If one approver can override another, that needs to be clear before it becomes a conflict mid-project.
Technical Information
If you have an existing site, document what’s running before the build starts:
- Current URL structure (export from a crawler, or from Google Search Console’s Pages or Performance reports)
- Current plugin list if WordPress
- Any custom functionality that isn’t standard WordPress — contact the developer who built it if needed
- Hosting environment details (PHP version, server type) — relevant if the new build has specific requirements
- Any active SEO work: current keyword targets, ranking pages you want to protect
This information allows the incoming agency to protect what’s working during the transition, rather than discovering after launch that twelve well-ranking pages changed URLs without redirects.
Say an online tutoring marketplace has 34 pages ranking on page one for competitive keywords when it starts a redesign. It gives the new agency a complete URL export from Screaming Frog and a Search Console impressions report. The agency maps every URL, sets up all redirects before go-live, and tests them in staging. This is the best-case scenario — and it’s available to everyone, not just businesses with sophisticated technical teams.
What to Have Ready on Day One
Consolidate the following before the build week starts:
- All brand files (organized in a shared folder, clearly labeled)
- All written content (organized by page)
- All photography and video
- All access credentials (shared securely)
- Navigation structure finalized
- Core functionality list confirmed
- Integration list confirmed
- Primary decision-maker identified
- Any hard deadline communicated in writing
If you’re not ready with all of this at kickoff, communicate that proactively. “Copy for the About page will be ready by end of week two” is manageable if the agency knows it. “We don’t have the About page copy yet” on week three when the agency needs it to finish that section is avoidable friction.
Our custom WordPress development includes a pre-kickoff checklist that we walk clients through before the build begins. It covers everything above and ensures the first week of build time is actually spent building — not waiting. Talk to us and we’ll scope what we handle versus what you provide.
Frequently Asked Questions
What if my business has never had a website before? Do I still need all of this? You’ll need less technical information (no existing URL structure, no legacy integrations) but the same brand and content requirements apply. The highest risk for a first-time site owner is underestimating how long it takes to write copy and gather photography. Build in more time than you think you need for both.
Can the agency help me organize and write content? Many agencies offer copywriting as an add-on service. If you want that, scope it and price it before the project starts. Don’t assume it’s included. If the agency is writing your copy, they’ll need detailed input from you — your value propositions, your customer descriptions, your tone preferences — so you’ll still be doing significant work; you’re just not doing the drafting.
What format should I use to share content with the agency? A Google Doc or Word document organized by page is the most common and easiest to work with. One document per major page, with headings identified, works well. Don’t send content in PDF form — it makes copy-paste difficult. Don’t send content spread across fourteen email threads — it creates version control problems.
Is there such a thing as being too prepared? No. The more organized your preparation, the faster the build goes and the fewer interruptions arise. Agencies charge for their time — unnecessary waiting is time you’re paying for without progress. Thorough preparation is one of the highest-leverage things you can do to get better value from the engagement.
What if our branding isn’t fully defined yet? Either define it before the project starts or scope a branding phase as the first step of the web project. Starting a web build before branding is finalized means either working with placeholder brand standards (and revising everything later) or making brand decisions under the time pressure of an active build — neither is ideal.
What happens if we’re mid-kickoff and discover we’re missing something important? Communicate immediately. “We just realized we don’t have licensed fonts for the website — how does this affect the timeline?” is a much better conversation to have in week one than in week four. Good agencies adapt. What creates problems is discovering missing elements late and then either rushing to resolve them or silently compromising the quality of the work.