From First Enquiry to Launch: How a Website Project Works

A website project for a small business runs through the same sequence almost everywhere: enquiry, call, materials, written scope, first draft, corrections, launch preparation and launch. Providers name the phases differently, but the order is rarely different.

If you run a business in Germany but grew up with another market's habits, the steps themselves will feel familiar. What tends to catch international founders out are the local items that have to be ready before go-live: an Impressum (the legal notice German law requires), a privacy policy written for GDPR, a decision on German, English or both, and access to a domain that may have been registered by someone else.

This guide walks through each step with three questions: what do you do, what does your developer do, and what has to be decided?

The eight steps at a glance

Who does what at each step

Use this table as a checklist for your own project. The "decision" column marks where nothing moves until you say yes.

Steps 1 and 2: enquiry and first call

Your enquiry can be short. Three sentences on your business, what the site should do and your current online presence are enough to make the call useful.

The call is mostly about content, not colours. What services do you want to show? What should a visitor do at the end: call, send an enquiry, book? Which pages does that take? For a page-by-page view, see which pages a small business website needs.

Raise the language question here, not later. If most of your customers speak German but your team works in English, you may need both. A second language usually means separate pages and separate text, so it changes the scope and the price.

If you want to prepare your answers in advance, use our website brief template. A completed brief shortens the call and makes quotes easier to compare.

Step 3: materials decide the pace

This is the step where most of the work is yours. Without content a developer can only build placeholders, and placeholders just move the work further down the line.

Typically you will need:

• final text for each page, in each language you have chosen
• images in good resolution that you have the rights to use
• your logo, ideally as a vector file (SVG or PDF)
• company details for the Impressum: name, address, legal form, who represents the company, email, and where applicable register number and VAT ID
• the address of your current site, if there is one
• access to your domain account, or contact details for whoever registered it

The content of the Impressum is set by § 5 DDG (the German Digital Services Act). Regulated professions, such as doctors or lawyers, have to add professional details. Only your business can supply this information, so gather it early. If your company is registered outside Germany, ask your adviser which disclosure rules apply to your structure.

Step 4: put the scope in writing

This step looks like paperwork, but it protects both sides. The written summary should list the pages, the features, the number of correction rounds, what is explicitly not included (for example copywriting or a second language), the price, whether that price is net or gross, and who owns the domain, the content and, if relevant, the code.

German providers usually quote net prices plus VAT (Umsatzsteuer). Check which figure you are looking at before comparing quotes from different countries. Our guide on comparing website quotes shows how to line up several offers.

Steps 5 and 6: draft, corrections, sign-off

The first draft is where you see the site as a whole. Book time for it and look at it on your phone too, since that is where many visitors will see it.

For the correction round, one complete list beats five separate emails. For each change, note the page, the place and the exact new wording. Decide internally who has the final say before you send it.

Step 7: launch preparation and the late blockers

Projects rarely stall on design. They stall just before the finish line. Sort out these points early.

Domain and DNS. To point your domain at the new site, its DNS settings (the records that tell browsers where the site lives) have to be changed. Someone needs access to the account at the domain registrar. If the domain was registered by a former agency, a co-founder or an employee who has left, getting access can take days.

Impressum and privacy policy. Under § 5 DDG the Impressum must be easy to recognise, directly reachable and permanently available. If you collect personal data, for example through a contact form, Art. 13 GDPR requires you to inform people at the time of collection, which is why the site needs a privacy policy. Decide early who writes these texts. Often that is the business itself, using a generator or a lawyer. Templates from your home country rarely fit German requirements as they stand.

Cookies and tracking. If analytics tools or embedded content such as maps or videos store or read information on visitors' devices, § 25 TDDDG generally requires consent unless the storage is strictly necessary. So a consent solution has to be in place before launch, not added afterwards.

On a relaunch there is a fourth point: old addresses should redirect to the matching new pages. An XML sitemap, on the other hand, is not strictly necessary for a small, well-linked site, according to Google, though it does no harm.

Step 8: after launch

Test on launch day yourself. Does a message from the contact form arrive? Do the phone and email links work on a mobile? Can the Impressum and privacy policy be reached from every page?

Don't expect to appear on Google the next day. Google says crawling new pages can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, and requesting a crawl does not guarantee inclusion in search results.

Also agree who looks after the site technically: updates, security, small edits. That is usually a separate arrangement and not part of the build price.

One example of a concrete process

At Ichii, the process for a business website looks like this: a Zoom call, you send your materials, we confirm scope and order in writing, you receive a first draft within 7 business days once all materials are in and the scope is confirmed, then one correction round and launch. The 7 days refer to the first draft. They are not a launch date, which depends mainly on when content, feedback and domain access are ready. You can see the same steps on our process page.

For how much time to plan overall and what typically slows projects down, read how long it takes to build a small business website.

If you build it yourself

With a website builder you go through the same steps, but you play every role. For a simple site with a few pages, that can be perfectly adequate. The Impressum, privacy policy and domain remain your responsibility either way.

Your next step

Go through the materials list in step 3 and count how many items you can tick off today. If your text, images and company details are largely ready and you are planning a site of up to 10 pages, look at our business website offer and send us a short enquiry.