The initial meeting with your client is essential in finding out about your client’s business. The aim is to ask questions and listen to their answers whilst talking notes. This is an exercise to uncover your clients’ problems and see where you can provide a solution.
As long as you have both agreed in principle on money the information gathered here will form the foundation for the website proposal document.
Questions that you will need to ask:
- Who are you speaking to?
- What is their role in the business?
- Are there any other stakeholders/decision makers?
- What does the business do and how does it provide value?
- What are your products and/or services?
- Where do they sell?
- What outcomes are required from the website project?
- What is working/not working? What needs a solution?
- Who are their customers?
- What metrics do they use to define success
- What is your budget?
- What must be included in the proposal?
- How did the last design experience go?
- What is the timeline?
Other questions that might find themselves in the conversation:
- Is this website a redesign or a new website?
- If you already have a website what problems are you currently experiencing?
- Who is your audience?
What tasks will they be looking to achieve?
- Purchase a product
- Fill out form
- Join mailing list
- Search for information such as contact information or product info
- Connect with others through social media channel
- Are you going to need e-commerce or a membership system of any kind?
- Do they require a CMS for updating pages?
- Are they happy with using WordPress or do they have another CMS in mind?
- What pages will need updating?
- How do people currently find them? Search or other means?
- What pages will your website have?
- What are your must-haves? (Share must-haves with other heads of departments so that important requirements aren’t missed)
Clarify, review and identify next steps
What timeframe do you have in mind for the website project?
Remember to ask what budget they have, if it’s too small you can talk about removing some nice to haves for must haves.
Now, review the purpose of the website in order to show that you have understood what your client has told you.
What are the next steps?
After reviewing the answers from the meeting we can now begin by writing a website proposal, which outlines the scope of the project, budgets and timeline.
The size and complexity of the website proposal will vary depending on the size of the project.
Once the proposal has been approved 🙂 and an agreement has been signed the project can start in earnest.
DO YOU HAVE A PROJECT WE CAN HELP YOU WITH?
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Whatever your business needs, we’ll create a great looking website that works for you.
