The minimum you need before we can propose a website

Many business owners delay a website because they believe they need professional photography, finished copy and a complete website plan before anyone can show them a useful direction. AlphaBlue does not require that. A proposal can begin once five small business and identity decisions are available.

The five things

#	What	What counts as “enough”
1	Business name	The name as you want it written — spelling, capitalization, in each language you use
2	What you actually sell	A plain list of your services or products, in your own words. Rough is fine; complete matters more than polished
3	Language(s)	Which language(s) the site should speak — e.g. Thai only, or Thai and English
4	Logo or wordmark	A usable logo if you have one — or permission to use a clean text treatment of the business name
5	Main color for a wordmark	If there is no logo and we will use a wordmark, provide one main color direction — a reference from your shop, poster or existing material is enough

Why exactly these five

Each answer removes a decision that would otherwise stall everything downstream:

• The name appears on every page, in the browser tab, in the address. Nothing can be drafted around a placeholder name.
• What you sell determines the entire structure. Whether the site needs three pages or eight, what the menu says, what the front page leads with — all of it derives from this list. This is why “rough but complete” beats “polished but partial”: a forgotten service means a missing page.
• Language shapes layout and structure from day one. Adding a second language later is possible; discovering the need mid-build causes rework.
• The logo decision — including the decision to go without one — unblocks the visual identity. A simple, well-set text version of your name is a legitimate choice that many businesses keep for years. What blocks progress is not the missing logo; it’s the pending decision about it.
• The main color gives a wordmark and first visual direction a usable anchor. It does not require a complete brand system; a clear reference is enough.

What is genuinely not blocking

This list is deliberately short, so it’s worth saying what’s not on it:

• Professional photos. A proposal can start from existing posters, social pages, phone photos or clearly marked placeholders. Suitable public images will still be needed before final production where the design depends on them.
• Finished text. Your rough descriptions are raw material — turning them into website copy is part of the work, not a prerequisite for it.
• A domain name. Useful eventually, decidable later, blocks nothing at the proposal stage.
• Certainty about every page. Proposals exist precisely so you can react to something concrete instead of imagining from nothing.

Waiting for every optional item to become perfect can delay a useful proposal without improving the first decision.

When you shouldn’t gather these yet

If you’re still deciding what the business itself is — which services to offer, what to call it, whether to commit at all — then the five things don’t exist yet, and forcing answers produces a website describing a business that won’t quite happen. A website documents decisions; it doesn’t make them for you. In that case, the useful work is finishing those business decisions first. The website will be waiting, and it genuinely only needs these five things when you are.

If you can answer all five right now — even roughly — then you are, by any practical definition, ready to hear a proposal.

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These five items describe AlphaBlue’s minimum proposal gate. Another provider may ask for different inputs before preparing a proposal.