As a client, you contribute three things above all: knowledge about your company and your goals, timely feedback in the review rounds, and content and access credentials – such as copy, images, product data and domain logins. A finished specification document is not required; the requirements are developed together with the agency.
A web project is teamwork: the agency contributes concept, design and development – you bring the knowledge about your company, your customers and your internal processes. Both together determine the result. So that you can plan your effort realistically, our project process defines for every phase which contribution is needed from your side. None of these points requires technical expertise – your perspective as a business owner and your knowledge of your own customers are worth more than any technical vocabulary.
Your contributions in each phase
- Initial consultation – Your idea, your goals and open questions; a finished list of requirements is explicitly not needed.
- Analysis & concept – Access to relevant information about existing systems and workflows, plus feedback in short coordination calls.
- Quotation – Reviewing the positions, asking questions and prioritising the scope: what must be ready at launch, what can follow later?
- Design – Existing brand assets such as logo, colours and imagery, plus feedback in the review rounds.
- Development – Content such as copy, images and product data, unless the agency creates it for you.
- Quality assurance – An acceptance round from a user's perspective: you know your customers and their expectations best.
- Launch – Approval of the go-live date plus access to the domain and existing systems.
- Operation – Your experience from day-to-day business and your wishes for further development.
In our experience, the most important contribution is content. Copy, images and product data are rarely complete from the start, and creating them tends to be postponed in day-to-day business. Delays in web projects are caused more often by missing content than by development itself. It is therefore worth clarifying early who delivers which content by when – and whether the agency takes over parts of it, for example through professional copywriting or AI-supported data enrichment for large product catalogues. Imagery also deserves early attention: professional product or team photos have lead times that should be factored into the project plan.
How much time should you plan for?
A blanket number of hours would not be serious, but the distribution is similar in most projects: your involvement is highest at the start – clarifying requirements, giving concept feedback, reviewing the quotation. During development it drops to regular, short check-ins, and before launch it rises again for acceptance testing and approvals. As a rule, firmly scheduled, compact appointments are sufficient. More important than a lot of time is reliable time: promised feedback that remains outstanding for weeks slows a project down more than any technical hurdle. Your contacts will tell you in good time when which contribution is needed – you do not have to keep track of the deadlines yourself.
Two organisational decisions make the collaboration noticeably easier in our experience. First: appoint a central contact person with decision-making authority who consolidates feedback from your organisation – contradictory feedback from several departments is one of the most common reasons for extra review loops. Second: schedule fixed approval windows in your calendar instead of reviewing drafts only when there happens to be time. And if it is still unclear internally what the project should achieve in the first place, upfront strategic consulting helps sharpen goals and priorities before implementation begins.
You do not need to bring a finished specification document. For the free initial consultation, your goals and open questions are enough – we then develop the requirements together, step by step.