Most website designers, when it comes to designing a website, often forget to focus on the client and ask relevant questions to aid in creating an amazing website. Understanding the right questions to ask when designing a website helps in achieving the goals and needs of the client. It also helps save website designers a lot of time as they know what the client wants. To do that, it is pretty normal to have a web design client questionnaire.
Here, in this article, we’ll be going over what questions to ask when designing a website and also explore what a web design client questionnaire is. We will also go over the stakeholder questions for website redesign. There will also be a dedicated section for clients looking to find information on what to look for when hiring a website design company to work with and why the questions to ask when designing a website are still useful for them.
Why are questions to ask when designing a website important?
A great way to get motivated at work is to figure out why you’re doing it. In this case, it’s to find out why you’re making a web design client questionnaire. The biggest reason for doing this is to know exactly what the client wants and to have something to refer back to every step of the way. Consider the questionnaire as a reminder of the client’s needs towards achieving their website goals.
This is further enhanced by the fact that departing on a website design project can take ages and a lot of money too. So if the client is unhappy or straight up unable to do what they want to do with the website, that’s months down the drain. Taking the time to make a client questionnaire or questions for stakeholders interested in a website redesign is vital to the project’s success.
Another important point is that a website designer should understand what their client’s target audience is when talking with them. This, along with knowing the company’s values and mission, makes a great starting point for designing the look and user experience of a website. For example, the target audience is very broad and doesn’t concern tech-savvy people.
In this case, you want to make it as upfront as possible and maybe even make it so that they are immediately put off to customer support or any other forms of communication rather than spending time on the site. This information and much more will be gotten from the questions to ask when designing a website.
Let’s explore the type of questions to ask when designing a website or redesigning one.
What web design questions should be in a client questionnaire?
Here we will discuss the types of questions to ask when designing a website.
When coming up with the web design client questionnaire or stakeholder questions for a website redesign, you’ll want to tailor the questions to be for them specifically. And even then, you may go over several revisions of the client questionnaire as finding out more and more about the client will give you better insight on how to ask for what you want to know.
The process of creating a client questionnaire can be tedious but don’t worry, we’re here to help. Here are some of the questions that can be part of your web design client questionnaire.
Web design client questionnaire:
1. What kind of services does the company plan to provide?
One of the questions to ask when designing a website is whether it will give you a general idea of the features you want to be baked into the website. Knowing the purpose of the site for the rest of the business will let you know what to prioritize and what is already fulfilled by other aspects of the business. Asking the right questions can help make a project simpler and quicker. For example, you would want to know whether the website is a place to learn more about the business or a way to reach out to them for help.
This question also opens the door to more interesting questions that help understand the main USP of a business. A web designer who knows the unique selling point of a business is better able to create a website that revolves around it. Think about it. Why would a consumer buy a product from a business’s website rather than go to Amazon to get it? Knowing this information and implementing it into the website design can redirect traffic from other third-party websites onto the business’s main website.
Another set of important questions to ask when designing a website is related to the business itself.
2. Tell us, in a few sentences, about your business.
Much like in a lot of other design industries, like marketing or graphic design, being able to get a compressed version of the ideas behind the product or service is vital. This will play a key part in how the company will be represented on their website: professional or laid-back, outgoing or reserved.
This gives the general public an idea of the company through both the functionality of the site and the look and feel of it. This may be the deciding factor when it comes to whether a customer seeks them out or not. The type of questions to ask when designing a website should help you get an idea about the business and industry the client operates it.
3. Who is your target market?
Another one of the strongest questions to ask when designing a website is knowing the business’s target market. Knowing if your audience will be other businesses or the average Joe will impact the functionality, look, and feel of the site. Besides the appearance of the site, knowing if the target market is supposed to be familiar with the product or if they need to be caught up with some easy-to-understand information is crucial.
This will dictate what information is on the site as well as whether support message popups should appear immediately or be tucked away. If the extra work for popups is done without properly understanding the target market, that’s resources put to waste on a feature that isn’t needed. Make this one of the go-to questions to ask when designing a website to save money and everyone some time.
4. What kinds of features are needed?
A bit of a loaded question, but one of the questions to ask when designing a website is what the required features are. To fully utilize the answer to this question, you must already be sure about the client’s audience and what kind of service the website will provide.
A more common group of features for a site might be to increase the visibility of their company, encourage engagement between customers and companies, or give more incentives to get newsletter signups. This is pretty much expected and doesn’t really require any specific questions to ask when designing a website.
For more advanced features such as live chat, social media integration, or call to action functions, you would need to devise a question in the web design questionnaire to know if your client wants a site to host their eCommerce store or a simple way to stay in contact and increase engagement.
If your client does give you a very simple answer, you may want to rephrase and ask again to get a better understanding of their goals.
5. Ongoing maintenance and support for the website
For you or anyone else in the development industry, this seems pretty obvious, but your client may not know that or even want it at times. It is one of the best questions to ask when designing a website in the questionnaire, as this could be a great opportunity for you to provide your own business with more regular cash flow.
As you continue to support and update the site, make sure it runs at its best. You would just need to handle normal busy work like hosting renewals and tracking security as well as backing up information. This also keeps you close to your client, allowing them to make additional changes as they see fit, which means more business for you. That is why knowing which questions to ask when designing a website is important, as it can turn a one-time job into a consistent source of income.
6. Budget for the website design project
Now that you’ve collected enough information to have an idea of what kind of work you’ll be putting in, it’s a great time to ask about the budget for this project. Through different questions to ask when designing a website, you already understand the needs of the client and how you can further improve the experience. However, asking about the budget can give you insight into the limiting factors of this project.
If the client doesn’t have the largest of budgets to offer, then you might want to use a website builder to make the initial features a breeze so you can work on what is really important. If the client has more to spare for the website, then spending the extra work on a custom solution will ensure that a site is a well-oiled machine. This also helps move on to the next of the questions to ask when designing a website.
7. When is the launch date for this website?
Now that you know what they want and how much they’re willing to spend, it’s time to find out when they want it. As great as fulfilling your client’s request is, managing and caring for your team comes first. So, knowing the time you have to do it will give you a better idea of how to prioritize features and efficiently manage the schedule and your team accordingly. Time management helps make the process as smooth as possible, keeping any delays at bay. Knowing what questions to ask when designing a website is really what makes this part easier, as planning is key to delivering a project on time.
8. Are there any existing styles or guidelines to follow?
Sometimes a client will know exactly what they want, so make sure to keep this as one of the questions to ask when designing a website. A client may require a website similar to one of their competitors, and knowing that information helps in organizing the back and front end of the website. Of course, don’t be afraid to change these guidelines, as your design expertise is what they’re paying for. If they don’t have an idea or guidelines, then asking them what their favorite or preferred websites are is a good starting point.
Now that we’ve explored some of the questions to ask when designing a website, let’s look at the questions you should ask when redesigning an already existing website.
What questions should be asked when redesigning a website?
Now that you know most of the questions to ask when designing a website, it’s time to figure out what you need to know when redesigning one instead. So let’s explore some stakeholder questions for website redesign.
The first of many stakeholder questions for website redesign is that you would want to ask is whether they’re looking for full retooling or changes in design or simply want to add new features. If you’ve been hired to redesign a website, you will want to ask relevant stakeholder questions for website redesign in regards to the templates, the design, the features, colors, and more.
Some examples of stakeholder questions for website redesign are as follows:
- Stakeholder questions for website redesign: What are you looking to change with the current website?
- Stakeholder questions for website redesign: Do you want to incorporate SEO best practices for the information on the website?
- Stakeholder questions for website redesign: What is the goal of the website?
- Stakeholder questions for website redesign: Do you want any particular features added to the website?
What to look for when hiring a website design company?
We’ve talked about the different questions to ask when designing a website and the stakeholder questions for website redesign, but what if you’re a client and are looking to hire a website design company? What do you look for?
Here are some of the things you should look out for when looking for a website design company:
- What to look for when hiring a website design company: Qualified website designers
- What to look for when hiring a website design company: An experienced website design company
- What to look for when hiring a website design company: Vast portfolio
- What to look for when hiring a website design company: Pricing
- What to look for when hiring a website design company: Free consultation
- What to look for when hiring a website design company: In-house designing rather than outsourcing
- What to look for when hiring a website design company: Company’s SEO approach
- What to look for when hiring a website design company: After-sales service
Just like how different types of questions to ask when designing a website help a developer understand the needs of the clients, the same is the case with the client.
Depending on the needs of your project, there are a lot of things you can consider looking out for when hiring a website design company. These are just a few types of things you should consider but this is not an exhaustive list.
