Short answer
What should I prepare before commissioning a website?
Commissioning a website starts with a one-sentence decision about purpose, not with a search for an agency: whose job does this site make easier, and which job. Galata Media does not quote before that sentence is settled, because it determines both the page count and the budget. The order is purpose, page inventory, account ownership, content responsibility, quote, contract — development last.
Key takeaways
- "We need a corporate site" is a wish, not a purpose; "our dealers should see stock and place orders" is a purpose, because it contains a user and a system.
- Domain, hosting and analytics accounts should be opened on day one under the company's own email; a domain registered in an agency's account becomes a bargaining chip when you leave.
- A quote given without a page inventory is the price of the site the agency imagined.
- If it is not written down who produces the content, the job lands on the client — the single biggest cause of delay.
- If the current site has addresses receiving traffic, list them before the rebuild; a site that launches with no redirect plan resets the search visibility it took years to accumulate.
What is the first question?
One question: without this site, who does which job today, and how? If you cannot answer in a sentence, there is no scope yet, and every quote collected at this stage is a guess. "We need a corporate site" is a wish. "A prospect should see which service we provide and who we have worked with before they contact us" is a scope — it contains a user, a moment and a decision.
Once that sentence is settled the second question answers itself: which page, if missing, would make the first release useless. Everything else can wait for phase two, and usually should.
Which steps come before collecting quotes?
Write the purpose sentence
One sentence containing a user and an action. It becomes the test for every later decision: when a feature is up for debate, this sentence settles it.
Produce the page inventory
Which pages exist, and how many need a unique template. Five service pages are one template; services, references and blog are three. Price follows template count, not page count.
Open the accounts in your own name
Domain, hosting, analytics and Search Console — all four under the company's own email. Granting an agency access afterwards takes five minutes; recovering a domain from an agency's account does not.
Assign content responsibility
Three names, for copy, photography and translation. If none is assigned the project stalls after design sign-off, and the party everyone waits on is usually you.
List the existing addresses
On a rebuild, export the list of pages receiving traffic from analytics. That list belongs in the contract as an annex, and mapping it to the new addresses with 301s belongs in the deliverables.
Collect quote and contract against the same list
Hand all three agencies the same inventory. The three prices that come back are, for the first time, prices for the same job, and the gap between them finally shows a difference in approach.
What filters an agency out fastest?
- Ask not for a portfolio but for a site that is still live. A project delivered three years ago and still standing says more than a good presentation.
- Open something they delivered and check it on a phone and for load speed; both are measurable without asking anyone for a client name.
- Listen to the answer to "whose name are the accounts opened in?". Hesitation is itself the answer.
- Ask for an out-of-scope list. An agency not used to producing one will be equally unprepared when extra work appears.
- Ask who writes the content. "You send it to us" is a legitimate answer; not having it in writing is not.
Which clauses belong in the contract?
- Transfer of intellectual property: it must say explicitly that design files and, where relevant, source code pass to you on delivery.
- Account ownership: domain, hosting, analytics and Search Console in your company's name.
- An out-of-scope list: what is excluded, enumerated — almost every dispute comes from work missing off it.
- An acceptance test: what "done" means; which browsers and devices it was tested on, and when delivery counts as accepted.
- Maintenance and response time: the free support period, then response time and how many hours of fixes per month.
- On a rebuild, a 301 redirect table: the old-address to new-address mapping belongs in the deliverables.
Frequently asked
Logo first or website first?
- If there is no brand identity, that comes first: the site is the first surface the identity is applied to, and a colour or typeface changed later means reworking the whole site. If an identity exists, the order does not matter. When Galata Media takes both together, identity decisions get tested on the site templates — which removes the risk of a system that looks good on paper and falls apart on screen.
How many pages should it have?
- Page count is an outcome, not a target. The right question is whether every question a client asks before deciding has a page. Services, the pricing approach, references, team, contact and frequently asked — on most corporate sites those six are the scope. Adding pages later is easy; splitting one enormous page that should have been six is not.
Should the agency register the domain?
- No. The domain should be registered in the company's name using the company's own email; granting the agency management access is enough. A domain sitting in an agency's account becomes an asset that has to be transferred when the relationship ends — and sometimes becomes a bargaining chip. The same rule covers hosting, analytics and Search Console.
What do I need to do after launch?
- Three jobs, all in the first week: verify the property in Search Console and submit the sitemap; if this was a rebuild, check one by one that the old addresses land on the new ones; and confirm analytics is actually collecting. Skip those three and the problem surfaces months later, as a traffic drop.
Sources
- 01Understanding page experience in Google Search results — Google Search Central, 2026
- 02Web Vitals — LCP, INP ve CLS eşikleri — web.dev, Google, 2026
Queries this page answers
- commission a website
- how to get a website made
- what to prepare before a website project