Corporate Website Checklist: How to Brief a Web Design Agency

A corporate website is your company's official shopfront online. Prospective customers, partners, candidates and investors often meet you there first. A site that looks good but cannot be found, loads slowly or does not explain what you do will not repay the investment. That is why asking the right questions before you commission the site matters more than any design decision.

This guide explains what to prepare when briefing an agency and what to verify at handover, with SEO in mind throughout. It applies whether your audience is in Türkiye, Europe or the Gulf.

Write the goal first

Describe in one paragraph what the site should do: collect enquiries, present products, build trust, support hiring? If the goal is unclear, every page tries to say everything and says none of it well. Also decide the action you want a visitor to take, such as filling in a form, calling or downloading a brochure. The page layout is built around that action.

Site structure and page plan

The core pages of a corporate site are usually the home page, about, a separate page for each service or product, case studies or projects, a blog or guides section, FAQ and contact. A dedicated page per service helps visitors find what they need and helps search engines understand each page's topic. Keep the menu short; a visitor should reach what they want in three clicks. For our approach to design and build, see our web design service.

SEO foundations to build in from day one

SEO is not decoration added after launch; it is part of the structure. Discuss these points openly with the agency:

• Titles and descriptions: every page needs its own title tag and meta description.
• Heading hierarchy: one main heading per page with logical subheadings.
• Clean URLs: readable addresses that describe the page.
• Sitemap and robots file: so search engines crawl the site correctly.
• Structured data: suitable markup for the organisation, services and FAQs.
• Internal links: related pages should link to each other.
• Image text: meaningful alt text on images.
• Redirects: when moving from an old site, old addresses must redirect to new ones, or earned visibility is lost.

SEO is ongoing work, with content and measurement continuing after launch. See our SEO and digital marketing page for that side.

Speed, mobile and accessibility

Most visitors arrive on a phone. The site must be readable, tap-friendly and fast on mobile. Serving images at the right size, avoiding unnecessary fonts and scripts, and preventing layout shifts directly affect speed and experience. Accessibility deserves attention too: sufficient colour contrast, keyboard navigation and meaningful labels help users and search engines alike. At handover, test pages on real phones and on a weak connection.

Content: the part most often delayed

The most common reason web projects slip is late content. Decide up front who prepares texts, photos, logos and case studies, and by when. A site does not launch with placeholder text, and real copy changes the design. When writing, answer the visitor's questions: what do you do, for whom, why choose you, what is the next step? Avoid inflated claims and unverifiable numbers; concrete information builds trust.

Multilingual sites and international visibility

If you sell abroad, a second language may be essential. For multilingual sites, each language needs its own address structure, language annotations (hreflang) set correctly and translation of good quality. Use reviewed translation rather than an automatic translation plugin. The language switch should be easy to find on every page. If you serve Gulf markets, ask early whether Arabic with right-to-left layout is in scope, since it affects design and testing.

Security, legal pages and administration

The site should run on HTTPS, forms should be protected against spam and abuse, and software should be kept up to date. Depending on your market, you need a privacy policy, cookie notice and form consents under GDPR or local data protection rules; settle the details with your legal advisor. On the administration side, write down whether you can edit content yourself, how backups are handled and who has access to the site.

Pre-handover checklist

Area	What to verify
Goal	Does every page have a clear action?
Titles	Does every page have a unique title and description?
Structure	Are service pages separate and linked together?
Speed	Does it load in reasonable time on mobile and a weak connection?
Mobile	Do all forms and menus work on a phone?
Redirects	Do old URLs redirect to the new ones?
Forms	Do messages reach you, and has it been tested?
Legal	Are privacy, cookie and contact details complete?
Measurement	Are analytics and search console set up?
Ownership	Have accounts, credentials and files been handed to you?

Common mistakes

The first is focusing on design and leaving content to the end. The second is skipping redirects when replacing an old site. The third is describing every service on one page. The fourth is not settling who owns the domain, hosting and admin accounts; these should be in your company's name. The fifth is abandoning the site after launch: fresh content and regular checks protect its value.

Working arrangements with the agency

Agree on how you will work together at the start. Who approves, through which channel and how fast is feedback given, and how many correction rounds are in the quote? When these three answers are written down, the process becomes predictable. Approving the design on master templates first, rather than page by page, saves time: once the home page and one service page are approved, the others follow the same language.

If you would like to scope your corporate site together, get in touch. A short note about your current site, goals and services is enough to start.