New Clients - What You Ask

I was wondering how you guys who are professional web designers/developers go about finding out what a client is wanting/after.

Do you have a set of questions that you always ask, how do you sum up what they require.

Bascially what is it you need to know to effectively create and write up a proposal to a client.

surely you meet with clients (this could be online or over the phone, not necessarily in person) and they give you a brief. Ask any questions related to functionality at this stage. You can then produce cost estimates from that. Next you might scamp up, or visualise three designs and then take it from there.

I’m not a designer or developer by the way (but have worked in marketing for a number of years) so take my words with a pinch of salt.

I start with asking some basic questions...

What is the mission of your organization?
How will creating a Web site support your mission?
What are your two or three most important goals for the site?
Who is the primary audience for the Web site?
What do you want the audience to think or do after having visited your site?
What Web-related strategies will you use to achieve those goals?
How will you measure the success of your site?
How will you adequately maintain the finished site?
Who is the liaison with the development team?
What is the budget for the site?
What special technical or functional requirements are needed?
Do you already have branding/artwork?
What is the production schedule for the site, including intermediate milestones and dates?
Give some examples of your competitors websites and what you like and dislike about them.
Give some examples of websites in different industries that you like the look of.

Then assess the answers and decide how to continue.

Is it a very simple site that has nothing out of the ordinary? If so quote cost based on previous experience with similar sites.

If not work out exactly what extra will be needed, go over that a few more times add a bit for the un-expected that always pop up and quote from there.

Hope that helps
Free

F O’Toole, you pretty much just quoted our Initial Client Design Questionnaire verbatim. Nice

You might want to take a stroll through some of the articles here http://www.alistapart.com/

Quote from: transeffect at Aug 23, 2009, 03:43 AM

F O’Toole, you pretty much just quoted our Initial Client Design Questionnaire verbatim. Nice

Haha, I had a list of questions that we got told to ask when I was studying web design. They’ve been changed a little since then, but essentially the same basic thrust.

A List Apart is a great resource for web design! It comes straight to my RSS along with Smashing Mag

Whatever you ask, just make sure you get it in writing what your deliverables are. If you can see it on paper and both of you can agree on it, then you’re good to go.

Whatever you ask, just make sure you get it in writing what your deliverables are. If you can see it on paper and both of you can agree on it, then you’re good to go

a written down step by step explanation of what you are going to deliver, will also give the client the transparency to realize, that building a website is real work and not just one or two "clicks".
it just happened to me, that a client told me that changing "something" wouldn’t probably take more than one "click". same client wanted a captcha, but he actually didn’t even know what it was good for. i think he somehow liked the look of it, and thought it would be just placing an image with numbers and characters...

Yeah I have had some amazing things come from people’s mouths about web development... they assume it take 2-3 hours to make a site that is to their exact needs, custom dev work and graphics. Then you have to pick them up of the ground when you tell the price, you have to explain it might be 80 hours of work at X amount an hour but they expect you to work 80 hours for peanuts. You have to ask them wheat their minimum hourly rate is and then justify it against why they wouldn’t work for less. I think 50% of people wanting a website are actually brainless to anything remotely technical.

What can I do for you?

- Generic questions give the company an open board to spill whatever they want (business goals, website objectives, future plans, marketing strategies, etc). Don’t force the conversation... just keep asking questions about their business, take notes...

After the client has filled you in, then ask specific questions about things that need cleared up.

The last quarter of the meeting should be about the solutions your company can offer. What value can you offer? How will you exceed expectations? etc.