Working With a Digital Agency: Week One Expectations

The first week sets the tone. A transparent agency produces artifacts you can argue with. A vague one produces a slide that says “we’re aligned.” Here’s what week 1 should look like — and what they need from you.

Day 1: Kickoff

Goals alignment

What does success look like? Not “a new website.” Qualified lead volume, lead-to-opportunity rate, organic inquiries on commercial terms. Bounce rate is not the scoreboard. Write the definition of a lead in the room. If sales and marketing disagree, fix that now.

Scope confirmation

What’s in, what’s out, what’s phase 2. Pages, features, SEO work, content responsibility, integrations. If it’s not written, it’s not guaranteed. This is the same test we use when evaluating a proposal.

Access and tools

Have these ready before kickoff or day 1 is a scavenger hunt:

• Analytics and Search Console
• CMS and hosting
• Domain / DNS
• CRM or form destination
• Brand files and a content owner

No access, no audit. The clock still runs.

Days 2–3: Discovery

Audit

Current site performance, SEO baseline, conversion paths. Where do buyers enter? Where do forms fail? Which pages already create pipeline?

Content inventory

What exists, what’s worth keeping, what gets rewritten, what gets redirected. This is how you avoid a pretty site that 404s your rankings.

Stakeholder map

Who approves IA? Who approves design? Who writes product copy? Who signs invoices? One decision-maker for day-to-day. A committee for a single milestone if you must — not for every sprint.

Days 4–5: First Deliverables

You should have something in hand by Friday. Not a finished design. Work product.

• Findings summary — What’s broken, what’s working, what we fix first.
• Sprint plan — Week-by-week for the next 4–6 weeks. Discovery and strategy sit in weeks 1–4 on a typical rebuild (six-week checklist). Design does not start because someone is impatient.
• Blockers — Anything we need from you: copy, product photos, CRM fields, legal review, IT allowlists.

No black boxes. If you cannot see progress by the end of week 1, ask why. “We’re still getting organized” for two weeks is a process problem.

What You Owe the Agency

One owner

Questions get a single answer. Parallel Slack threads from five VPs will add weeks.

Fast access

Same-week login provisioning. Waiting on “IT next sprint” is how discovery slips.

Honest constraints

Budget ceiling, immovable launch dates (trade show, fiscal year), compliance. Surprises in week 6 cost more than honesty in week 1.

Feedback SLA

2–3 days on written findings. Silence is not approval. It is delay.

Decision Criteria: Is This Agency Working?

Green flags in week 1: they asked for analytics before opinions; they wrote exclusions; they defined success as pipeline, not pixels; they named who does what.

Red flags: no discovery, no access list, “we’ll figure out SEO later,” a 4-week promise on a 40-page B2B site, or a kickoff that is only a brand workshop.

After Week 1

Strategy and IA. Then design (2–4 weeks) and build (4–8 weeks) on a normal rebuild. You will keep seeing weekly output if they work in sprints. The relationship should feel like a shared backlog, not a waiting room.

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We run weekly sprints with transparent delivery. See our web design process or start a project and we’ll show you what week 1 produces.