How to Prepare Your Website Content Before a Redesign
A website redesign is an exciting milestone for any business. It’s your chance to refresh your brand, improve user experience, and create a digital presence that truly works for you. But here’s the thing: even the most talented designer can’t work miracles without the right raw materials.
The content you provide, the images you gather, and the information you organise all play a crucial role in how smoothly your project runs and how effectively your new site performs. Think of it as laying the groundwork before building a house. Get this bit right, and everything else falls into place.
Whether you’re a hotel looking to attract more direct bookings, a restaurant refreshing your brand, or any business ready for a digital upgrade, preparing your content beforehand will save time, reduce stress, and help you get a website that genuinely reflects what you’re all about.
Why Content Preparation Matters
Before we dive into the how, let’s talk about the why. Preparing your content in advance isn’t just about being organised (though that certainly helps). It’s about ensuring your new website can do its job properly from day one.
When you arrive at your first design meeting with content ready to go, your designer can start building a site structure that actually fits your business. They can see what you offer, understand how you talk about it, and create a user journey that makes sense. Without this preparation, you risk delays, rushed decisions, and a website that doesn’t quite capture what you do.
For hospitality businesses, this is particularly important. If you run a hotel or restaurant, your website needs to showcase rooms, describe amenities, highlight your location, and ultimately convert browsers into bookers. That requires clear, compelling content and beautiful imagery, all ready to slot into a design that works.
Audit Your Existing Content
Start by taking a good, honest look at what you already have. Go through your current website page by page and make notes. What’s still relevant? What’s outdated? What’s missing entirely?
Create a simple spreadsheet listing each page, its purpose, and whether the content needs updating, rewriting, or scrapping altogether. You might discover that your services page hasn’t been updated in three years, or that you’re still promoting an offer that ended last summer. Now’s the time to catch these things.
For hotels and restaurants, this audit should include room descriptions, menu information, facility details, and any seasonal content. If your afternoon tea menu changed six months ago but your website still shows the old one, flag it. If you’ve renovated rooms or added new amenities, make sure you’ve got that information ready to include.
This process often reveals gaps you hadn’t noticed. Perhaps you’ve never properly explained your booking process, or you’ve assumed people know where you’re located without actually providing clear directions. Write these gaps down. They’re opportunities to improve your new site.
Gather High-Quality Images
Images make or break a website, particularly in hospitality. People book hotels based on what they see, and they choose restaurants that make their food look irresistible. Your designer can create a stunning layout, but if the images you provide are blurry, poorly lit, or simply not engaging, your new site won’t convert.
Start collecting high-resolution images now. If you don’t have professional photography, consider investing in it before your redesign begins. For hotels, this means properly photographed rooms (ideally in natural light), communal spaces, exterior shots, and local area images. For restaurants, you’ll want beautifully styled food photography, interior atmosphere shots, and images that capture the experience of dining with you.
Organise your images into clearly labelled folders. Nothing slows down a design project quite like hunting through hundreds of random files to find that one photo of your deluxe suite. Name your files descriptively (“deluxe-double-room-sea-view.jpg” rather than “IMG_4857.jpg”) and group them logically.
Remember, stock photography rarely does justice to what makes your business special. Guests want to see your actual rooms, your real food, your genuine atmosphere. Authentic imagery builds trust and sets accurate expectations, which means happier customers and fewer disappointed reviews.
Write Clear Service Descriptions
Your services, products, or offerings are the heart of your website. People visit to understand what you do and whether it’s right for them. Yet many businesses struggle to describe their services clearly, either being too vague or drowning visitors in unnecessary detail.
For each service or offering, write a description that covers the essentials: what it is, who it’s for, what’s included, and what outcome or benefit the customer gets. Keep it straightforward and jargon-free. If you run a hotel, describe each room type with specifics: bed configuration, capacity, amenities, views, and any special features. If you’re a restaurant, detail your dining options, whether that’s à la carte menus, tasting menus, or private dining experiences.
Think about the questions customers actually ask you. Those questions reveal what information people need to make decisions. If guests regularly ask whether your rooms have tea and coffee facilities, that detail belongs in your room descriptions. If diners want to know about dietary accommodations, address it clearly in your dining information.
Write in a way that feels natural and reflects how you’d talk to customers in person. Your brand personality should come through in your descriptions, whether that’s warm and welcoming, sophisticated and elegant, or relaxed and informal.
Prepare Testimonials and Reviews
Social proof is powerful. When potential customers see that others have had positive experiences with your business, it builds trust and confidence. Before your redesign, gather your best testimonials and reviews.
Look through your Google reviews, TripAdvisor feedback, direct emails from happy customers, or social media comments. Select testimonials that are specific and credible. “Great hotel!” tells visitors nothing. “The staff went above and beyond to accommodate our early check-in, and the sea view from our room was absolutely stunning” paints a picture and demonstrates real value.
For each testimonial, note who said it and when (keeping it relatively recent shows you’re consistently delivering). You don’t need dozens, just a handful of genuine, compelling testimonials that highlight different aspects of what you do well.
If you’ve got case studies or particularly detailed customer feedback, even better. These deeper stories can become valuable content pieces that demonstrate your expertise and the results you deliver.
Organise Your Information Hierarchy
Not all content is equally important, and your website structure should reflect that. Before your designer starts mapping out your site, think about how information should be prioritised and organised.
What do most visitors come to your site looking for? For hotels, it’s usually booking a room and checking availability. For restaurants, it might be viewing the menu or making a reservation. These primary actions should be immediately obvious and easy to access.
Then consider your secondary information: location and directions, facilities and amenities, pricing, policies, and contact details. Finally, there’s supporting content like your story, your team, local area guides, or blog posts. All valuable, but not the first thing people need.
Create a simple site map showing how you imagine your content organised. Your designer will refine this based on best practices, but starting with your input ensures the structure makes sense for your specific business and customers.
For hospitality businesses, think about whether you want rooms organised by type or by capacity, whether packages and offers deserve their own section, and how you’ll present food and drink offerings if you have multiple dining spaces or service styles.
Write Your About Page Content
Your About page is often one of the most visited pages on your website. People want to know who they’re dealing with, what makes you different, and why they should choose you over competitors.
Write content that tells your story authentically. How did your business start? What drives you? What do you care about? If you run a family hotel that’s been welcoming guests for three generations, that’s a compelling story. If you’re a chef who left city life to open a restaurant showcasing local produce, people want to hear that.
Include relevant credentials, experience, or achievements that build credibility, but keep it human. Nobody connects with a list of qualifications. They connect with passion, purpose, and personality.
If you have team members who interact with customers, consider including them too. Guests appreciate knowing who they’ll meet, and it adds warmth and authenticity to your business.
Prepare Practical Information
Websites need to answer practical questions quickly and clearly. Gather all the essential details visitors might need:
- – Your full address and postcode
- Phone number and email address
- Opening hours or check-in times
- Parking information
- Accessibility details
- Payment methods accepted
- Cancellation policies
- Any terms and conditions
For hotels, this extends to check-in and check-out times, age policies, pet policies, and any other house rules. For restaurants, include reservation policies, dress codes if applicable, and any relevant information about group bookings or private events.
Having this information compiled beforehand means your designer can incorporate it appropriately throughout your site, rather than you having to remember to send it later when they’re already deep into the build.
Create a Content Handover Document
Once you’ve gathered everything, compile it into a clear, organised document for your designer. This doesn’t need to be fancy, just well-structured and easy to navigate.
Organise content by page or section, clearly label all images and files, and include any notes about how you envision things working. If you want a particular testimonial to appear on your homepage, say so. If you’ve got specific ideas about how room types should be presented, explain your thinking.
The more clearly you communicate your content and preferences upfront, the more likely you are to get a website that matches your vision. Good designers are excellent at getting into their clients’ minds and delivering exactly what they picture, but they’re not mind readers. Give them the information they need to create something brilliant.
The Payoff: A Smoother Project and Better Results
Yes, preparing content before a redesign takes time and effort. But the payoff is substantial. Projects run more smoothly when content is ready. Designers can work more efficiently. You avoid delays caused by waiting for information. And most importantly, your finished website is more likely to be effective from the moment it launches.
A hotel website with compelling room descriptions, beautiful photography, and clear booking information converts browsers into guests. A restaurant website with mouth-watering imagery, detailed menus, and easy reservation options fills tables. Any business website with well-prepared, thoughtfully organised content serves its audience better and achieves its goals more effectively.
When you invest time in content preparation, you’re investing in the success of your online presence. You’re setting yourself up for a website that truly represents your business, serves your customers, and helps you grow.
So before you dive into your next redesign, take the time to gather, organise, and prepare your content. Your designer will thank you, your project will run more smoothly, and your finished website will be all the better for it.
And if you’re looking for a design partner who truly listens, communicates clearly, and delivers websites that work, we’d love to chat about your project.