Sometimes it happens clients are in a rush to launch the site as soon as possible, and they skip the stages of detailed brief and creative meetings with designers. We can understand their impatience to reveal the site and their business promptly though this approach has many downsides. Website is an online presentation of your brand and it has to be impeccable without any mistakes.
Insufficient understanding of the relevant target audience, short-term and long-term goals, the USP, creates a bad picture about your site, and brand as they are not represented in a proper way.
Nobody wants to get into such an unenviable position. Hence, asking the right questions at the very beginning can be extremely important, to avoid mistakes and unnecessary revisions in the upcoming steps.
Luckily, we don’t face such problems as we have specific questions for our clients in the initial phase to give us clear direction and all the needed information.
Let’s check these 5 most relevant questions.
#1 Describe your campaign and your own perception of your business
You might consider this question as redundant as all companies are easily searchable on Google and all needed information are available, but this is not the right approach. It could work in collaborations with large companies but when it comes to owners of small businesses we prefer learning about \ them and their companies well.
This way, we get the opportunity to comprehend their own perspective: inspiration to start the company, vision, mission for the upcoming five or so years, etc.
The best point persons from small companies are the owners for sure as they know their business better than anyone. Each company consists of many layers, our task is to discover them, unveil them, and get to the very essence.
In large companies, we usually communicate with marketing executives as they are able to elaborate the goals, expectations from the website development. Before the initial meeting with executives in large companies, the Titan Design team prepares well. Research is the most important task in the preliminary stage of website development.
#2 Do you already have a website and does it increase your sales?
If the client already has a website and needs us to design a new website, this situation makes an ideal position for us. This gives us an open space to research the current website, check the content, loading speed, and other details crucial for a functional site that will bring conversions to the site owner.
Only when we create the site specification we can offer suggestions for improvements.
Besides, we deal with other consultations with our clients regarding copywriting, starting a blog, or improving the existing one, visuals, and any other ideas and wishes they might have. Some of the vital points are website categories, the menu, homepage, and generally the look of all pages.
#3 Give us more information on your competition and the way you stand out from them
After thorough research of the current website, the next step is to research the competition and focus on their strategy.
Our goal is to create a website that will outperform the competition, gather the most valuable information, the most striking brand characteristics, and the benefits of consuming products and services. The main objective of the new site is to increase the number of clients, keeping the current ones and attracting the competing clients.
It is also significant to research the information the competition is forcing, if they have a blog page, what topics they cover, what could our client do in a different way; related to website design quality, website speed, domain authority, etc.
#4 Deadline for website development
It is significant to establish a launching date, developing phases, and the client’s understanding of each phase. The timeline should be agreed upon with the client to give space to potential changes.
A big and demanding project as any web development represent should be split into several small phases. Each phase should consist of many small tasks, easy to accomplish. Also, it is significant to inform the client of the progress of each phase.
The client should have access to the general timeline and have insight into the current project phase. Team-client collaboration should be the highest priority.
#4 Deadline for website development
It is significant to establish a launching date, developing phases, and the client’s understanding of each phase. The timeline should be agreed upon with the client to give space to potential changes.
A big and demanding project as any web development represent should be split into several small phases. Each phase should consist of many small tasks, easy to accomplish. Also, it is significant to inform the client of the progress of each phase.
The client should have access to the general timeline and have insight into the current project phase. Team-client collaboration should be the highest priority.
#5 What budget do you have at your disposal?
This is also one of the crucial questions to ask at the very beginning so the project can be planned properly. Depending on the budget, we will not deal with a family business website and a large corporation in the same way. Furthermore, we need to know how many designers and other colleagues should be included into the project and plan their time too.
