How to prepare materials for a website so development goes faster

Published August 27, 2026

I will go through it in order: which information to collect before the first layout, how to sort it into folders and name the files, in what form to hand over texts, tables and documents, and what to do if some of the materials are not there yet. At the end I will show an example of the project folder, and you can take it as a base.

You do not need technical knowledge for this. It is enough to know your business and spend a little time putting things in order before the work on the design begins.

What materials are needed for website development

The set depends on the type of site, but the base is almost always the same. It is convenient to think of it as five topics on which the developer will ask questions.

For a corporate site with several lines of work, the list below grows: each line has its own texts, photos and cases. For a business-card site or a portfolio it is shorter, but the section about you and a selection of works matter more.

About the company

What you do, who you work for, how you differ from your neighbors on the market, how many years you have worked and what you can confirm it with. The logo in the original format, the brand colors and the fonts, if you have them, belong here too. If an old site or a presentation already exists, it is worth attaching them: even an outdated text shows how you yourself talk about your business.

About the services or the products

A list of the lines of work, a description of each, the terms, the prices or the principle of the calculation, the timelines, the limits. For a store, a product table is needed instead of service descriptions; it is more convenient to talk about that separately. For each service it is useful to understand who it suits and with which questions people usually come to you: the blocks of the page later grow out of this.

About the advantages

Here you need things that can be shown: certificates, guarantees, real reviews with permission to publish, examples of work, figures you are ready to answer for. The phrase “an individual approach and high quality” tells little on a site, while a certificate number or a photo of a finished object speaks for itself.

Contacts

Phone numbers, messengers, email, addresses and opening hours, links to social networks. If the site will have forms, the data for the personal data processing policy will also be needed: who the operator is, which data is collected and why.

Photos and video

Shots of objects, products, the team and the premises, and videos, if they are needed on the pages.

How to sort the materials into folders

What works best is one shared project folder in cloud storage, and inside it folders by the sections of the future site. Then the developer opens the “Services” folder and finds everything about the services there, instead of searching for the right file in one shared pile.

Subfolders are worth naming the way the pages or blocks will be named: “Home”, “About the company”, “Services”, and inside — “Apartment renovation”, “Design project”. If some line of work is not decided yet, it is better to create an empty folder with a note than not to create it at all: that way it is clear what is missing.

It is worth keeping a separate folder for the shared materials: the logo, the brand colors, the fonts, the company details. They are needed across the whole site, and it is convenient to keep them in one place.

How to name the files

The file name should explain what is inside, without opening it. “IMG_4821.jpg” and “new document (3).docx” say nothing, and each such file has to be opened so you can guess what it belongs to.

A few simple rules:

the name contains the section and the content: “uslugi-remont-oblozhka.jpg” or “Services — renovation — description.docx”;
if the order matters, a number stands at the beginning: “01-…”, “02-…”;
a document has one current version; the old ones are better moved into an “Archive” folder, rather than kept beside it with the notes “final”, “final2”, “definitely final”;
if a photo has an explanation, it can be put in a separate text file in the same folder.

Latin or Cyrillic in the names — not a matter of principle, if there is one rule for the whole project. The main thing is that the names are equally clear to you and to the developer.

In what form to hand over texts, tables and documents

Texts are most convenient to hand over in an editable form: a Google Doc or a Word file. Screenshots, PDF presentations and photos of printouts also contain text, but it has to be retyped or recognized, and that means extra work and a risk of errors.

It is good when each page has its own document, or at least its own section with a heading in a shared document. If the wording is still being discussed, it is worth noting that right in the text: “I am clarifying the price”, “the review is agreed with the client”. Such notes save correspondence.

Prices, specifications, lists of branches and everything that repeats by one scheme are better collected in a table. From a table the data is easier to move onto the site and easier to update later.

Any cloud storage you already use will do: Google Drive or another. It is important to open access by link to the whole project folder and not to change its structure without warning while the work is going on. A link that has stopped opening in the middle of the project stops the work the same way as missing materials do.

Access that is remembered at the last moment

Besides texts and photos, a site needs access. Usually this is the account of the platform the site will be on, access to the domain registrar, the email the requests will come to, and analytics counters, if they already exist.

If the site is made on Tilda, I create it on the client’s account: the project and the access to it stay with you. Your own domain needs a paid plan, and it is better to settle the payment before publication, not on launch day. The domain should be registered to you as well.

It is convenient to hand access over separately from the other materials, not in the shared project folder and not in an open chat. Passwords in a file named “passwords.txt” next to the photographs — a bad idea, even if the folder is closed.

In what order to collect them

Collecting everything at once is hard, and it is not needed. Work on the site starts with the structure, so the first thing needed is a list of sections: which services or categories will be on the site and what is most important to you. With that list you can discuss the structure, even if the texts are not written yet.

Next it is worth collecting the information for the home page and the main services: they determine how the design will look. Photos for the cover and the first screens are also better chosen at this stage, because the layout is built around them. Materials for the secondary pages, reviews, documents and small details can be handed over as the work goes, if you have agreed in advance when they will be ready.

It is better to hand everything over through one channel. When some of the files arrive in a messenger, some by email, and some sit in the cloud, time goes into searching, and something is sure to get lost. Photos sent in a messenger as images, besides, often arrive compressed, so the originals are better placed in the cloud folder.

What to do if some of the materials are missing

This happens often, and it is not a reason to put off the start. It is important to mark honestly what is missing, and to decide what to do about it.

There are several options. Some of the materials can be prepared along the way: for example, reshoot the photos while the work on the structure is going on. Some can be replaced for a time: a neutral image instead of a shot that will appear later, a short description instead of a detailed one. And some sections can be launched later, if without them the site already does its job.

What is not worth doing — inventing what is missing. I do not make up reviews, figures and facts about the company: the site has only what you can confirm. A temporary placeholder is more honest than an invented review, and it is easier to replace.

If there is no one to collect the materials, I can take this part on myself: organize what there is, select and process the photos, prepare the graphics. This is ordinary work; it is simply counted in the estimate. If the site is already running and needs to be filled with new pages or products, that is a separate task — updates and content.

An example of the project folder

Below is a notional example for a company site with several services. This is a sample of the structure, not a specific client’s project.

Project-site/
  00-General/
    logo.svg
    brand-colors.txt
    company-details.docx
  01-Home/
    texts-home.docx
    01-cover.jpg
    02-cover-spare.jpg
  02-About-the-company/
    about-the-company.docx
    team/
  03-Services/
    apartment-renovation/
      description.docx
      photos/
    design-project/
      description.docx
      photos/
  04-Reviews-and-cases/
    reviews-with-permission.docx
  05-Contacts/
    contacts.docx
  Not-yet/
    what-still-needs-shooting.txt
  Archive/

The “Not-yet” folder here is needed not for order, but for honesty: it shows what still has to be collected, and that can be put into the work plan straight away.

When the materials are arranged like this, the first conversation about the site becomes specific. If you want to discuss your project, start with the quiz on the site: briefly describe the task, and I will reply myself and suggest where to start the gathering.