Why this is the question that decides the timeline
Design cannot be finished against placeholder text, because the layout is an argument about what matters and lorem ipsum has no opinion. A page designed around fake words gets redesigned when the real ones arrive shorter, longer or differently shaped.
So copy is not a parallel workstream that catches up at the end. It is upstream of layout, and every week it is late is a week the design cannot be finalised — which is why words before pixels is the order rather than a preference.
The sentence that predicts a delay is “we will write it ourselves”, said without a name and a date attached. It is almost always sincere and almost always wrong, because the person who would write it has a job already.
Three ways to resolve it
**You write it, with a named person and a date.** Cheapest, and it works when the named person is real and the date is in the schedule rather than in an email. It works especially well for businesses whose founder knows exactly how they sell — that knowledge is worth more than any writer's polish.
**The agency writes it from interviews.** Two or three conversations, recorded, turned into pages. It costs more and it is usually faster, and the output is better than most in-house attempts because the interviewer is listening for the things you have stopped noticing you say.
**A specialist writer, briefed by both.** The right answer when the copy has to do something specific — a repositioning, a technical product, a regulated category. Also the most expensive and the slowest to schedule.
What good source material looks like
Recorded sales calls beat any brief. The way you answer a real objection out loud is the copy; it just has not been written down yet.
The questions customers ask before buying, listed. Every one is a section, and the order they get asked in is frequently the order of the page.
HikeMind is a case where this was the whole job: four words had to hold an entire positioning — brand, data, AI, integrated. That kind of compression only comes from knowing precisely what the business is, and no amount of layout rescues it if the words are vague.
What does not help: the old website's copy, competitors' copy, and adjectives about quality. All three are where projects go to sound like everyone else.
Settling it in the brief
Write it down before the project starts: who writes each page, when it is due, and who approves it. Three columns, one page. This is one of the five things a brief has to answer and the one most often left blank.
If the honest answer is that nobody internally will do it, say so early. It is a normal answer, it changes the quote, and it changes the quote far less than discovering it in week three does.
And put the approver's name in the same document. Copy that is written and then rewritten by a second opinion in week five costs more than copy nobody wrote at all.
Questions we get asked
Who should write the copy for a new website?
Whoever is named in the brief with a date next to them. That can be someone internal, the agency working from recorded interviews, or a specialist writer — all three work. What does not work is leaving the column blank, which is the most common cause of a late project.
Can a website be designed before the copy is written?
Not finished, no. Layout is an argument about what matters and placeholder text has no opinion, so a page designed around fake words gets redesigned when real ones arrive. Structure can start early; final design waits on real copy.
What is the best source material for website copy?
Recorded sales calls and the list of questions customers ask before buying. The way you answer a real objection aloud is already the copy. The old site, competitor sites and adjectives about quality are the three sources that make projects sound like everyone else.