The first week of a website is not for a polished homepage. It is for learning what the business needs the site to do, and for putting that into an order someone can follow. Drawing too early freezes the wrong structure. We spend the opening days making the structure hard to misunderstand.
Listen before drawing
We ask what a visitor should understand in the first minute, and what the company needs them to do. Those are different questions. A founder may want to explain the whole method. A buyer may only need to know whether this firm works in their world, and how to start. We write both down, then decide which one the homepage is for.
We also look at what already exists. Sales decks, proposals, product screens, the way the team describes the work on a call. The site should not invent a second company. The useful language is usually already in the room. The first week is for finding it and cutting what does not help a new reader.
Structure the story
Once the sentence is clear, we name the pages and what each one is responsible for. Home carries the point of view. Work carries evidence. A service page carries the offer in enough detail to be believed. Contact carries the next step, without a form that asks for more than we need. If a page has no job, it does not go in the navigation.
A sitemap is a list of promises. Each page should be able to keep one.
We sketch this as an outline before we sketch it as a layout. Headlines, the order of sections, and the question each section answers. When that outline can be read aloud and still make sense, it is ready to become a page. Until then, visual design is guessing in a nicer typeface.
Design the page people land on
Most visits do not begin at the top of the homepage and proceed in order. People arrive from a search, a referral, or a link in a proposal, often on a case or a service. The first week includes that page, not only the one we wish they would see. The landing view has to carry enough context to stand alone, and a clear way back to the rest of the studio.
By the end of the week we want a shared picture: the sentence, the pages, and the first screen of the one that matters most. The visual language comes next, and it has something specific to serve. That is a better start than a homepage that looks finished and says very little.
