What to give your web designer: the Kampala checklist

The short answer

Give your web designer eight things: a one-page brief, your words and photos, your logo files, domain and hosting access, the WhatsApp number and email that will receive enquiries, your payment details, the name of the one person who approves, and the dates that matter. Each missing item either stops the work or forces the designer to guess, and every wrong guess costs you another round of changes. The website content checklist below covers all eight and says what each gap costs you, followed by a filled-in brief for a Kampala business that you can copy.

Growth Informer Software Services in Kampala builds business websites on a fixed quote, paid 50/25/25, and you own the code and the data. Send us the filled-in brief and we can put a fixed quote on one page. If your business is not registered yet, sort that first: a business name costs UGX 90,000 in official URSB fees and a TIN from URA is free. A stall with no regular customers may not need a website yet; a daily sales record and a free WhatsApp Business catalogue come first.

The checklist: eight things, and what happens when one is missing

This is the information needed to build a website, in the order a designer will ask for it. Tick what you have, and for each gap read what it costs you. Rough is fine at the start: a voice note, a Google Drive folder of phone photos and a typed list of services beat a perfect file that arrives in a month.

• 1. The brief. One page: what you sell, who buys, the one thing a visitor should do (call, WhatsApp, book or pay), the pages you want, and two or three websites you like with a line on what you like about each. If it is missing: the designer builds a general site, you reject it at the first review, and that review goes on explaining what you wanted instead of improving the site.
• 2. Your words and photos. Your services with "from" prices, where you are, opening hours, the questions customers ask you on WhatsApp, and real photos of your premises, your work and your team. Well-lit phone photos are fine. Send the original files through Google Drive, or as documents on WhatsApp, because photos sent the normal way on WhatsApp are compressed and lose detail. If it is missing: the site waits on placeholder text, or launches with stock photos that make you look like every other business, and a visitor who cannot see your real work has less reason to call you.
• 3. Logo files. The original logo as a PNG with a transparent background and, if you have one, a vector file (SVG, AI or PDF), plus your brand colours. A screenshot from WhatsApp is not enough. If it is missing: a blurry logo in the header, in the preview when someone shares your link and on your Google profile, or a delay while one is made. If you have no logo, say so on day one so the choice is made early: a simple text logo now, or a proper logo first.
• 4. Domain and hosting access. The web address you want, or the logins to your existing domain, hosting account and Google accounts, with you as the owner and your email on each one. Add the designer as a user where the service allows it, instead of sending a password in a group chat. If it is missing: the site cannot go live, or it goes live on an address tied to someone else's account and you find out when it expires. If you do not own a domain yet, how to register a .ug domain walks through it, and website hosting costs in Uganda shows what the yearly bill should look like.
• 5. The WhatsApp number and email. The number that will receive enquiries, the business email, and who answers each one and how fast. If it is missing: the buttons point to a phone nobody watches, or to a personal number you change next month, and the enquiries the site brings in go nowhere. If the business still runs on a personal Gmail address, business email on your own domain can be set up alongside the site.
• 6. Payment details. If the site takes money: whether you already have an MTN MoMo or Airtel Money merchant account or a payment gateway account, the bank account name exactly as registered, and what customers should see on a receipt. A merchant account is opened with your business documents and is not instant, so start it early; the mobile money integration guide explains the options. If you only want enquiries, this item shrinks to the business name for our invoice. If it is missing: payments cannot be tested, the checkout stalls at review, or money lands in the wrong account.
• 7. One person who approves. A named person who can say yes, with everyone else sending comments to that person, and the number of days that person needs to review each stage. If it is missing: three partners each ask for different changes, the review never closes and the next payment stage waits behind it.
• 8. The dates. The launch date and the real reason for it (a shop opening, a season, an event, an advert starting), the date your content will arrive and how many days you need to review each stage. If it is missing: "next week" becomes next month, the project slips behind other work and the launch drifts past the moment it was meant for.

Items 2, 4 and 7 are the ones only you can supply: nobody else can photograph your work, open accounts in your name or decide for your partners. Start those three on the day you decide to build, so the designer can work on the layout while they arrive.

A one-page brief, filled in for a Kampala business

Copy this website brief example into a note on your phone or a WhatsApp message and replace the answers. The business is a made-up sample, not a client, and every answer is there only to show the level of detail.

• Business: A home bakery in Bugolobi, Kampala, trading under its registered business name. The name on the site must match the registration certificate exactly.
• What we sell: Custom birthday and wedding cakes, boxes of cupcakes, and weekly pastry orders for offices.
• Who buys: Families and event planners in Bugolobi, Muyenga, Ntinda and Nakasero, and office managers ordering for meetings.
• What a visitor should do: WhatsApp a cake order first, call second. No online checkout yet: a deposit is paid by MTN MoMo or Airtel Money after the order is confirmed on WhatsApp.
• Pages: Home, Cakes (photo gallery), Office orders, Prices and how to order, About, Contact.
• Prices to show: "From" prices for each cake size, written by the owner. Delivery areas listed by suburb.
• Contact: WhatsApp +256 7XX XXX XXX, answered by the owner from morning to evening. Email on the business domain. Instagram link.
• Photos and logo: About thirty phone photos of finished cakes, taken in daylight, as original files in a shared folder. Logo as PNG and SVG. Brand colours: pink and cream.
• Domain and hosting: No domain yet. The owner creates the accounts in her own name and adds the designer as a user.
• Three sites I like: Three links, and one line on each: big photos, a clear price list, a WhatsApp button on every screen.
• What I do not want: Music, autoplay video, a slider that hides the prices.
• Who approves: The owner only. Her sister sends comments to her.
• Dates: Launch before the December wedding and Christmas orders. Content delivered within a week of signing. Feedback within two working days at each stage.

Notice what the sample settles before any design starts. No online checkout, so item 6 shrinks to the name on the invoice. One approver, so item 7 is done. A real deadline with a reason, so item 8 cannot drift quietly. That is one page and one sitting to write, and with it we can put a fixed quote on one page: the pages, what is left out and the 50/25/25 stages. Without it, the first week goes on questions you could have answered once.

A designer can only build what you describe. One page that names the buyer, the action you want and the dates beats ten pages of adjectives.

What to add at each level, and what it costs

The website project checklist grows with the size of the site. The price column is our starting price for each level, shown in your region's currency and fixed in writing before work starts. The last column is what to add to the eight items.

Anything not in your brief is either an extra or a guess, which is why our quote lists the pages and the exclusions. Ask every designer, us included, to list the domain and hosting in the quote with the renewal prices, and to say whose name each one is registered in. If you are comparing quotes, send the same brief to each designer so the quotes cover the same pages. The full breakdown by tier is in what a website costs in Uganda.

Set this up first, in this order

A website is rarely the first thing a new business should pay for. This is the order that pays, with the real cost of each step and what can wait.

• Register the business. The official URSB fees: a business name costs UGX 90,000 (UGX 35,000 to reserve the name and UGX 55,000 to register it). A private company with share capital up to UGX 5,000,000 pays UGX 105,000 to register, plus the UGX 35,000 name reservation and stamp duty of 0.5% of the share capital. Owners report paying agents anywhere from about UGX 600,000 to several million shillings for the same filings. That is what owners report, not a published rate, and you can file yourself on the URSB e-registry. The registered name is the one that goes on your site, your invoices and your Google profile. The full bill is in the cost of registering a business in Uganda.
• Get a TIN. URA issues it free of charge. An individual with a National ID can get an instant TIN online in about five minutes, and companies apply online too. If someone charges you, they are charging for their time, not for the TIN.
• Get the trading licence. KCCA issues it in Kampala; elsewhere your city, municipal or town council does. The fee depends on your trade and the grade of the area. On KCCA's published rates a kiosk pays from UGX 6,000 a year, a restaurant UGX 36,000 to 187,500 and a boutique or beauty salon UGX 52,500 to 210,000. A KCCA licence runs for the calendar year: it is paid before you start trading and by 1 January each year. See trading licence fees by trade and grade.
• Adopt the free habits. Keep business money apart from personal money, write down every sale and expense each day, and use the free WhatsApp Business app with a catalogue and a written price list. Take real photos of your work, answer enquiries the same day and ask happy customers for a review. Never pay for reviews. All of it costs nothing, and the photos and price list you build up are the same material item 2 of this checklist asks for.
• Claim your Google Business Profile. Claiming it is free. It is also commonly sold as a setup service, because doing it properly takes time: the right category, photos, verification and the first posts. The photos, opening hours and WhatsApp number you gather for items 2 and 5 are what the profile asks for. We quote that work after seeing what you already have, and the profile stays in an account you hold. See Google Business Profile setup in Uganda.
• Then the website, , with an optional monthly care plan at a month if you want us to look after it after launch. It pays once customers want to check you out before they call, or you want somewhere to send people from adverts and from Google. Ask any designer exactly what their care plan covers: updates, security, backups, content changes and response time.
• A custom system, only when no ready-made tool fits. If a free or low-cost app already handles your stock, bookings or invoices, keep using it. For a shop, Growth Informer Business, our own live cloud POS, inventory and business platform, covers sales and stock without a custom build. A system built around your own workflow is quoted per project after we have seen that workflow, .

What is not needed yet: a market stall with little capital needs a daily record, WhatsApp and a free Google listing, not a website. An online shop, an app or a custom system can wait until a spreadsheet and WhatsApp stop coping, or until customers ask to pay online. If you do not yet know what you sell and to whom, spend the first weeks selling by phone and WhatsApp before you build anything, because the brief above cannot be written until you can answer its first three lines.

How to send it to us, and what happens next

Put the brief in one WhatsApp message to +256 702 946 946, with a link to a shared folder (Google Drive works) for the photos and logo. If the photos are not ready, send the brief now with the date they will arrive: we can quote from the brief, and the photos follow by that date. We read it, tell you which level in the table fits, and send a fixed quote that lists the pages, the exclusions and the payment stages.

• A fixed quote before work starts, so the price you agree is the price you pay.
• 50/25/25 payments: 50% to start, 25% at review and 25% at launch.
• You own the source code and the data. They are yours at handover, not held back.
• Mobile money when you need it: if the site takes payment, MTN MoMo and Airtel Money collection is quoted as part of the build.

We meet in person in Kampala: Nakasero, Kololo, Kampala Road and the Industrial Area; Ntinda, Bukoto, Naguru, Bugolobi, Muyenga, Kansanga and Makindye; and we also serve Wakiso, Mukono and Entebbe. Bring the brief on your phone and we go through it together, line by line.

Our portfolio lists 37 live website and app builds, including Silverback Coffee House, a food ordering site, Peculiar Poultry, and Hausblick Realty, a real estate platform, so you can open the live ones on your own phone before you hire anyone. We have also managed over USD 100k of client ad spend, which is why the brief starts with the one thing a visitor should do: a site built to bring enquiries is planned from that answer, not from the colours.

Frequently asked questions

What do I need to give a web designer to start my website?

Eight things: a one-page brief, your words and photos, your logo files, domain and hosting access, the WhatsApp number and email for enquiries, your payment details, the name of the one person who approves, and the dates that matter. You can start with rough material, such as a voice note, a folder of phone photos and a typed list of services and prices.

How much does a website cost if I bring everything ready?

Our business websites start on a fixed quote, paid 50/25/25: 50% to start, 25% at review and 25% at launch. A complete brief means the quote lists exactly which pages you get and what is left out, so the price you agree is the price you pay. An online shop starts , and the domain and hosting are listed in the quote with their renewal prices.

What if I do not have a logo or professional photos?

Tell the designer at the start. A simple text logo can be agreed early, or a logo can be made first. Well-lit phone photos of your real premises, work and team are fine and better than stock photos, but dark or blurry ones are worth retaking before the build. Send the original files, not copies compressed by WhatsApp.

Who should own the domain and hosting?

You should, in your registered business name, with your email as the owner on each account. Add the designer as a user instead of sharing a password in a group chat. With Growth Informer you also own the source code and the data.

Can I start before my business is registered?

You can write the brief and gather the content while registration goes through, but the name on your site, your Google profile and your invoices should match the registered name. A business name costs UGX 90,000 in official URSB fees and a TIN from URA is free.