A website project questionnaire is your most valuable asset to understand clients’ and their websites business. Even if you are developing a website for your self you still have a client -YOU. And being your own client can make a project even more difficult as you swap hats and have to be everything to everyone but a key point of success will be your pre analyse of what you actual requirements are.
Why Do You Need a Web Design Client Questionnaire?
So you understand your client’s motivation, strengths, pain points, objectives, and budget. You also need to consider the target audience, promotion tactics, and lead generation strategies right from the beginning. Designing a information website is different from a service website or ecommerce website. from It is important to keep in mind what the core purpose of the website is going to be.
11 Questions to Ask When Building a brand new website
These are just meant to be a starting point to get you going and some of your clients answers will illicit further questions
- What is your business about?
What they do;
- How long they have been in the market;
- Their company’s fundamental values;
- Products;
- Target audiences;
- Marketing strategies;
- A unique value proposition that differentiates them from the competition;
- Their short and long-term business plans.
Knowing the answers to these type of questions should assist you when making decisions throughout the project.
- Why do you need a website?
Many clients don’t have the answer to this simple question – “what do you need a website for?” Increase brand awareness?, Sell my product or service?, create a community?
Asking a few more “why” and “what” questions will help you better understand your client’s real motivations and suggest solutions that will work best for them.
- Who is your target audience?
- Demographics: customers’ location, age, gender, preferred device for online searching/browsing, etc.
- Psychographics: customers’ values, buyer personas, hobbies and interests, lifestyle, and online behavior.
- What do you want your visitors to do on the website?
Such as:
- Purchase a product or a service
- Click links/buttons to get information or learn something;
- Download an app or another digital product;
- Receive online support for their questions/pain points;
- Read/engage with your content;
- Register for an event;
- Fill out a form/make contact/ lead generation, etc.
Likewise, you need to discuss the overall goals of the website with your client. Talk about each page’s individual goals, too (as each page usually leads to action).
- What are the top features that will contribute to the website’s success?
- Call to Action (CTA) buttons;
- Live chat and other customer support software;
- Social media buttons and sharing options across all your client’s platforms;
- banners for highlighting promotions or discounts;
- contact forms
- blog section
- example work/past projects
Put them in priority order
- What will makes this website stand out from the competition?
- Why are you and your business special?
- An exceptional service?
- Free shipping?
- Unique products people cannot find elsewhere?
- A robust product guarantee?
- Discounts and promotions?
- Who are your top competitors?
- What would you like to have on your website regarding branding and style?
- Do they have a style guide?
- Do they have a logo and colour scheme ?
- Have they got the content for the websites pages/products?
- Do they have any promotional material already that the website needs to be consistent with?
- What pages besides the ones listed below do feel you require?
Clients may not realise but you must include certain pages on a websites for transparency, user experience, legal reasons, and better Google rankings. At a minimum, your client’s website should have:
- A homepage;
- An “About Us” page with information matching Whois data;
- Privacy policy page to let website visitors know exactly what happens to their info;
- Terms and conditions – a must-have page for all websites;
- A “Contacts” page;
- The 404 error page (website under construction);
- FAQ page to answer customers’ questions.
- Do you have a domain name and host?
This seems obvious and some time straight forward and some times not so straight forward but here are some tips for choosing a good domain name https://www.tipsforyourwebsite.com/what-is-a-domain-name/
Domain names and webhosting within a website development project are also relatively cheap parts of a project so don’t get to caught up in going for the cheapest because you could end up paying a lot in time and energy managing them
- Date to go live with new website?
Make sure it is a realistic time frame. Remember the business saying- under promise and over deliver. Things can go wrong- unexpected events can pop up so make sure that there is some breathing space in the development time frame and plan it out. (That is another post right there- actually breakdown planning of a project)