What to prepare before you apply for your free website ยท #1
Our application form is short on purpose, but a free website is built by real people, and real people build faster and better when they start with good material. Twenty minutes of preparation before you apply makes your application stronger and your finished site far closer to what you pictured. Here is the exact checklist our build team wishes every applicant arrived with. None of it needs to be perfect. Close counts, and honest notes beat polished guesses.
1. Your business basics
Write down your business name exactly as it should appear on the site, the phone number you want published, and the email where site inquiries should go. Decide the address question ahead of time: a full street address if customers visit you, or city only if you work from home and would rather keep the house private. Add your city, the towns or area you serve, and your hours. These details end up in more places than you would expect, from the header of every page to the map a customer uses to find you, so getting them right once, here, saves corrections later.
2. Your logo, or your logo idea
If you have a logo, find the original file. A PNG or SVG from whoever designed it is ideal, and a clean photo of it is better than nothing. If you do not have one, you are not behind. Write one sentence describing what you imagine: an object, an animal, your initials, a feeling. Then note the styles you lean toward, simple and clean, bold, vintage, playful, or elegant. A one sentence idea plus a style direction is plenty for a designer to start from, and it is far more useful than saying you have no idea at all.
3. Your colors and your look
Browse the example designs and note which ones feel like your business. If you already have brand colors, write them down, including a rough description if you do not know the codes. Just as useful: the colors and styles you dislike. Owners often know what they hate more clearly than what they love, and both directions save a round of revisions. If there are websites you admire, in any industry, save the links and one line about what you like in each. Designers read those notes like a map.
4. Your words, in rough form
You do not need finished copy. You need honest raw material. Start with one sentence: what you do, and who you do it for. Then list your services, with a sentence or two under each about what the customer actually gets. Write two or three sentences about how the business started. Finally, the most valuable lines of all: what makes you different. Licensed and insured, family owned, free estimates, same day service, locally owned. Only claim what is true, and only what you can stand behind, because these are the lines your customers will quote back to you.
5. Your photos
Real photos beat stock photos almost every time. Gather the best shots you have of your work, your team, your shop, or your finished jobs. Phone photos are fine. Good light and a steady hand matter more than a fancy camera, and a handful of strong, honest images will outperform a gallery of generic ones. If you truly have nothing usable yet, that is okay too. Tell us, and we will plan tasteful stock photography matched to your trade while you build your own library.
6. Your proof
If customers have praised you in writing, gather it. Short testimonials are welcome, and for each one, make sure you have that customer's permission to publish their words with their name. If your reviews live on Google or another platform, save the links. Proof is the section owners most often scramble for at the end, and it is the section visitors trust the most, so collecting it early puts you ahead of nearly every applicant.
7. Your pages and your one goal
Finally, decide what your site must do. Almost every business starts with the same core: Home, About, Services, and Contact. Your trade may add pages, a menu, a gallery, a service area page, or booking. More important than the list is the single action you want a visitor to take: call you, request a quote, book an appointment, or walk in. Tell us that goal plainly and the whole design will quietly organize itself around it. One last practical item: if you own a domain name, have it handy. If you do not, write down up to three names you would like, in order. Then apply, verify your email from the link we send, and we will take it from there.