What to have ready before you build

Have these to hand

Ten minutes with a notebook before you type anything is the difference between a site that goes live on Tuesday and one that sits half-finished for a fortnight. This is what to collect, and the rest of the lesson is why this list and not some other one.

Every item on it is something the builder is expressly forbidden to make up. Where you have not supplied one it leaves a marked gap on the page rather than a plausible answer.

Have these to hand

The phone number

The one you answer, written the way you want it read. If two exist, decide now which goes on the site.

An email address

One somebody checks. On your own domain if you have one, the one you really read if you do not.

The address, or the area

A street address if customers come to you, named towns if you go to them. One of the two has to be true.

Registration and scheme numbers

Gas Safe, NICEIC, CHAS, a waste carrier licence, a company number. Copy them off the card digit by digit.

Insurance

Who it is with and the figure. Public liability with the amount is the line customers look for.

Years trading

The real number, from the year you started rather than the year it began feeling like a business.

Prices you will publish

A callout fee, an hourly rate, a from-price on the three jobs you do most. Ranges are fine if you would honour them.

Photographs of your own work

On the phone you are holding. Six honest ones beat any amount of atmosphere.

Note. None of this has to be gathered before you can see a site. It has to be gathered before a customer sees one.

Why it refuses to make these up

The rule is flat and has no exceptions written into it. Never a phone number, an email address, a street address, a certification, a registration number, an insurance policy, a star rating, a review count, or a figure for years in business. Not even a plausible one, and not even as filler that somebody will obviously replace.

The reason is what happens if it does. These land on a real business's live site. A made-up Gas Safe number is not a copy problem to be tidied up next week, it is a trading-standards problem with your name against it. A plausible phone number that belongs to a stranger sends your work to somebody else's phone, and you find out weeks later, from the silence.

Filler is the dangerous version of this rather than the harmless one, because filler is what nobody re-reads.

Note. A page of confident, wrong specifics is the one thing that makes a reader distrust everything else on it — including the parts that were true, and including you.

What you get instead of a made-up one

Where it has no real value, the build writes a plainly marked placeholder — a gap that is obviously a gap and could not be mistaken for a fact — and says in one line underneath what it needs from you.

So a missing registration number is visible on the page and named in the reply. That is the design: the failure is a hole you can see rather than a number you cannot check. It looks unfinished because it is.

1. Read the reply before you read the site. The line naming what it needs is there before you have scrolled anything.
2. Go through the page for anything bracketed, blank or plainly marked as missing.
3. Send one turn carrying the real values, all together rather than one per turn.
4. Look at the same places again afterwards, and read the numbers rather than glancing at them.

Note. The rule gets stricter on later turns, not looser. The instructions for a pass that deepens an existing site say so outright: depth is what that turn is adding, and invented specifics are the easiest depth there is. A second turn will not quietly fill your gaps in for you.

The list it does fill in, which is the riskier one

There is a second list, and it catches far more people. Prices, opening hours, the list of services you offer, the occasional testimonial: those the build is told to write concretely rather than leave as gaps — but only where it was given no real details. Say nothing about your prices and you get prices. Plausible ones. On your site.

That is right for a first draft, because an empty price section reads as an unfinished site. It stops being right the moment the site goes live carrying figures you never agreed to. The first list fails loudly and this one fails quietly, so the quiet failures are the ones to go looking for.

Tip. Read the finished site aloud with a pen in your hand and stop at every number. A number is either one you can point at, or one that has to go.

The awkward ones, one at a time

Most people have six of the eight and are stuck on two. These are usually the two.

Photographs, because nobody else can supply them

Pictures of your own work are the one item with no substitute. Attach them to the message you build from — up to four at a time — and they are the only photographs of your actual jobs that can reach the site.

Your site may well arrive with pictures you did not send. Those are commissioned for the build and are deliberately empty of anything that would amount to a claim: no people, no readable text, no numbers, nothing whose exact identity would be saying something about you. They set a tone. They are not evidence, and a stranger choosing between you and two others is looking for evidence.

Note. If you are taking the free first build, no pictures are commissioned for it — the free build covers the building and not the shoot. Which makes your own photographs the only ones on the page, and worth attaching before you press send.

If you genuinely do not have one yet

None of this is a reason to wait. A site with two marked gaps in it is more use to you than no site, and the gaps are a short list rather than a rebuild.

1. Leave it out. Do not approximate it, do not round it, and do not put in a number that is nearly right.
2. Let the marked gap stand while you get the rest of the site looking like your business.
3. Go and get it — the certificate off the shelf, the policy number off the schedule, the company number off the register.
4. Send one short turn carrying the real values, all together.
5. If it is never coming, take that section off rather than softening the wording around it.

Note. A trade site with no badges on it reads as a small firm, which is what you are. One with a badge that does not check out reads as something else entirely, and the person most likely to check is the customer about to hand over the most money.

Checking it before a customer does

All of this is undone by not looking. Make this pass once before you send anybody the address.

1. Ring the number on the site from a phone that is not yours, and let it ring through.
2. Send an email to the address on the site and wait for it to arrive.
3. Read every registration and licence number against the card, digit by digit, out loud.
4. Check the years-trading line against the year you really started.
5. Check every price is one you would quote on the phone this afternoon.
6. Check the towns named are ones you would genuinely drive to.

Tip. Do the same six after any turn that rewrote a large part of the site. A build that reorganised a contact section had every reason to keep your number, and no way for you to know it did short of looking.

Common questions

It has left a placeholder where my phone number should be. Why not leave the section out?

Because a site with no way to contact you is worse than one with a visible hole in it, and the hole is a job you can finish in one turn. The reply names what it needs.

Can I give it my details somewhere other than the message?

Your business address and a WhatsApp number can be stored on the connectors screen, and the address is handed to the build word for word as a fact you reported. Everything else on the list reaches the builder only through what you type and what you attach.

It wrote prices I never gave it. Is that a fault?

No, it is the intended behaviour on a draft with nothing to go on, and it is why this lesson exists. Prices, hours and service lists are written plausibly where you supplied none. Read them, then replace or remove the ones that are not yours.