What is the first step to planning a project? It is to understand all the client’s requirements in one go to progress on the right path. Basically, creating a web design questionnaire which helps you get a clear understanding of what the client wants. This questionnaire even helps the client understand what they are looking for. Some practical matters need to be considered at the start of any web design project to facilitate a smooth design process. It is essential to ensure that the final website deliverables fit entirely within the context of your client’s vision, mission statement, and tagline
Putting together a list of questions to ask the client when designing a website ensures everyone involved in a project is on the same page; everyone shares the same vision for the final deliverables. It is an effective tool for setting and managing expectations and laying the foundation of a web design proposal. This article will tell you what questions to ask your client before starting your website design project.
1. Are you looking to revamp your website or build a completely new website?
At the very start, you need to determine whether the project is building a new website from scratch or redesigning the existing one. This will help in estimating how much work is needed. Designing a whole new website requires a completely fresh approach and will be on the higher side in terms of expenses. While improvements to an existing website may require only minor updates. The existing website can offer a wealth of material based on the client’s likes or dislikes; it will also cost far low than creating a new site.
2. How can you best describe your business in a few lines?
Apparent businesses may not require an explanation, but others may. So, it’s always better to get first-hand info about what the business is all about. You may gather details like their motivation for starting their company, their overall vision, mission statement, beliefs and values.
The questions can assist you in gaining insight into what matters, not just to the client but also to their audience. This info will also come in handy if a client wants to portray their inception story on their website. The kind of business your client runs may influence parts of the project’s design and what content needs to be prominently displayed. Let’s say your client is a law firm; you’ll want to create a website that prominently features their work experience, famous case studies, their team of lawyers, etc.
3. Who is your target audience?
It’s a common goal of any website to be relevant to its audience, which means it has to be targeted to them. Besides basic customer demographics like age, gender, and location, details such as their job titles, industries, company sizes, etc. are also important.
It’s good to ask if your client’s ideal customer is knowledgeable of the product or solution their brand offers, or there’s a need to educate them. This will determine the user flow and the types of deliverables that may be involved – such as data visualisations, help guides, etc.
4. What services do you offer?
Next, you need to understand your client’s products and services, and their business model. The aim is to gain insight into what kind of website would most suit their brand and their products and services? And, it is not just knowing about the stuff they sell. You must thoroughly understand the client’s business and how it works.
Your client may maintain an online subscription magazine, or a collated job board, where users require a registration form. It’s good to identify these feature requirements during the early stages, as they can help you learn how realistic the timeline or planned budget is?
5. How are your services different from others?
A mojority of the clients will prefer that you design a unique site that differentiates them from their rivals. One way to do this is by understanding their USPs or competitive advantages. These must be included as a core part of their website. It can be anything – something as simple as excellent response time to customer inquiries or fast, free product deliveries, having unique return policies, offering the cheapest rates around, and more. Understanding your client’s competitive advantage can help you incorporate elements that ensure their target audience gets the best possible impressions of the brand.
6. What features does your website need?
The client’s target audience and industry and their goals will essentially decide what features they need on the website. They may want to increase their site’s visibility in search engines, encourage engagement, boost sales, or amplify newsletter signups. One of the web design questionnaire goals is to get you to the heart of your client’s pain points to design an effective solution for them.
Based on your client’s business, the response can be as fundamental as a contact form that offers a place for users to fill in their phone numbers and basic details. These details can give their target audience the impression that they’re readily available. Or, they may need product pages with clear descriptions, a smooth checkout process, payment integrations in case they are an e-commerce portal. Your goal is to understand what your client most want to see on their site and their audience needs.
7. Would you like to avail the support and maintenance services?
You may understand the time it can takes to stay on top of website maintenance and updates. But, your client may not know. Therefore, your website design questionnaire is an excellent place to determine whether the client might be expecting you to handle these post-launch services.
Standard support and maintenance tasks can include security tracking and backups, as well as domain name and hosting renewals . You can consider charging a monthly or annual fee to handle extra tasks like new additions or updates to features or generally keeping the website up and running.
8. Do you have any existing style guides and guidelines?
It is crucial to know if your client has existing style guides or other types of branding guidelines. This helps in keeping your design consistent, as well as reducing revisions to the final product. You may need to further discuss if you believe that any style rules do not fit in with their vision of the site. Even if there is no formal documents, you can check if they have online or printed materials such as banners or business cards; draw inspiration from them.
9. What is your ideal launch date for the website?
How much you charge the client partly depends on the timeline for completing the project. Especially if your team need to put in extra efforts to have everything ready on time. Depending on how tight the timeline is, certain features will be prioritized over others. A timeline enables you to zero-down on a launch date and helps you track if your team is on track to complete the project on time. You’ll want to consider carefully whether you can commit to that deadline. This will keep you from having to pull out halfway down the road. The more specifics you have about the project’s scope, the better positioned you’ll be to offer a realistic timeline to the client.
10. Finally, what is your budget?
It’s finally the time to find out your client’s budget. To a large extent, this will determine how much can be done on their site. The client’s budget will influence the tools or features used or included in the final product.
If their budget is low, it makes the most sense to go for a website builder. While with higherbudgets, you can even opt for building custom solutions. The plugin functionality for a Content Management System (CMS) such as WordPress can also be extended in this case. Their budget quota will also help you decide whether or not the client is suitable for you. If they simply can’t afford your rates, or do not think you are worthy of what you’re charging, they may not be a good fit.
Now that you know what to include in a web design questionnaire and how it can help you zero down the most important details needed to understand your client’s vision of their project thoroughly, you can start compiling your list. For any web design and development requirements, contact our team.
Read more about mistakes to avoid while designing responsive websites here.
