##pre-project questions##
Why are you contacting our agency?
What is your elevator pitch? A short summary used to quickly and simply define a profession, product, service, organization, or event and its value proposition
Why are you building this website?
Can you please describe the website?
Who will use the website? Your web designer will likely spend time reviewing the kinds of people who come to your site, so as to better understand your visitors’ needs and habits. It’s very important to structure your website to entice your visitors to take the specific actions you want them to take.
One method is to create user personas, which represent the types of people you’ve identified as having some specific interest in your organization. Before your web design kickoff meeting, segment your site visitors into representative “types”:
What are their goals and aspirations? Their key issues?
What media do they read, watch and listen to (magazines, TV, music, books, websites, blogs)?
Is it possible to segment your site visitors by gender? Age? Income? Geography? Education level?
Are your visitors technologically sophisticated? Are they early adopters?
Are they on social networks like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn? Are there other more targeted communities (online or offline) where your visitors can be found?
What words or phrases (lingo) do they tend to use? What sorts of imagery or language appeals to them?
Think about what you want each user persona to believe or learn about your organization. What actions do you want them to take?
What problems does your business solve for it’s clients?
Who are your competitors?
What is your competition doing?
Where is the content?
“Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.”
Is your content ready? In part? If not, who will create it? How quickly and frequently can new content be developed?
Do you have a “content matrix”, which can simply be a spreadsheet that lists every piece of potential content on your site, along with where it will be located and who will be its owner?
You may consider developing content specific for each of your user personas.
Beyond just text, do you also have photos or video you want to include? Are there “non-web page” elements you might think to include, like white papers, e-books or webinars?
In their best-selling book “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die“, Chip and Dan Heath describe six attributes that make for great (online) content:
Simplicity — Prioritize what ideas you want to get across. By trying to prioritize everything, nothing is a priority.
Unexpectedness — Use surprise to grab people’s attention.
Concreteness — Avoid speaking in abstractions.
Credibility — Is your content believable?
Emotions — Tap into emotion rather than just intellect.
Stories — We get people to act on our ideas by telling stories.
Name 3 things that are most important in the design
Name 3 things that are least important in the design
Are there websites that are attractive to you?
Could be anything. Overall design, typography, color, features, menu, design elements etc. The more input to us, the better.
What kind of features on other websites do you really hate?
How much are you willing to spend?
Don’t avoid this question. 80% of the people I talk to claim to not have a budget, and yet when I tell them we charge at least $10K in fees, they instantly reply, “we can’t afford that.” You probably have a budget. What is it?
We ask this question not to figure out how much we can get from a client, but to understand how much they are willing/able to spend to meet their goals and to make sure they meet our minimum.
Are you prepared to invest in the site post-launch?
“It’s fine for a company to fund an initial web build-out in a capital budget, but companies are really sabotaging their web investments if they don’t put together significant operational budgets for the constant changes and improvements that a compelling and effective website requires.”
Even as you first get started, it’s important to understand that there will be lots to do post-launch, including:
Create and post new content
Analyze what’s working and not working
Testing (A/B)
Optimize the site based on what you learn
Add new features
Participate in social media
Build inbound links
Support promotions and offers
Distribute email newsletters
Etc., etc., etc.
Remember, after all, that a website is a process, not a project.
Who is the final decision maker?
Design by committee fails every time. Trust me.
This all-too-common, and severely flawed, approach allows you to include everyone in your organization who feels entitled to a say, but it also dilutes responsibility and ultimately sabotages your outcome.
If you need to have multiple people involved in your project, that’s fine, but you must identify one person as the ultimate decision maker. Period. Failure to give someone that responsibility means a failed project.
If several of these questions tripped you up, you might not be ready to start your website project just yet. But if you were able to successfully answer all of them, congrats: you’re on your way to one kick-awesome website!
What is your deadline for finishing the site?