Common Client Questions Your Web Designer Needs To Ask

Client Questions with Explanation

1. Do you have a Logo?
   Always good starting point.
2. What kind of visitors do you expect on your website?
   (income, interests, gender, age)?
   This question helps you to better understand the potential visitors and plan the website design and development in the best way. Obviously, a site for sports will be different from the site for governments or corporations.
3. List the names of two or more of your competitors and describe how you are different from them?
   The competition on the internet is vast. That means that website you’re creating will be compared to a lot of other sites, so the point is to make the website memorably metaphoric, has its own personality, and stand out.
4. What actions do you want visitors to take on the site?
   A website design can be used to target selling products, providing information, educating, making visitors want to make a phone call or fill out the form. Depending on the client’s needs the website structure, functionality, and design can vary greatly.
5. What features should be used on your website (contact form, pictures, video, etc.)?
   We (as web designers) need to know what the client would like to have on the website and manage expectations accordingly. Quite possibly a small company’s website doesn’t need to have as many features as a media portal. However, some clients are very unspecific about features they’d like to have on their website.
6. List the names of three sites that you like and what do you like about them?
   Very often a potential client already knows what their website should look like or be similar to, so there’s no need to re-invent the bicycle. On the contrary, some clients don’t have a clue what they want (telling you “You’re the professional…”).
   Ultimately, not following client likes or dislikes can get you into trouble.
7. Do you have any color preferences, look and feel for the website?
   Trust me, if the client would like to have a website with green text and with a black background no matter how persuasive you can be, in the end, you have to follow the client preferences. So it’s better to get it right from the start.
8. What do you NOT want on your site in terms of text, content, color, graphic elements?
   Some people hate blue and stock images of corporate “employees”, while others will require just that. You’d better know such things in advance.
9. Who will be the contact person for this project and what will be the turnaround time?
   There’s nothing wrong if in the company you’re dealing with a number of people who are responsible for the project, work as a team player. But to avoid multiple redundant and often conflicting inputs, you need to know just one name. You also need to specify a time frame within that you will be getting a reply from this person, otherwise, your project can last forever.
10. Who will be responsible for maintaining the website and how much time he or she would have for it?
    If your client asks for a forum it will require some time to moderate so the right question is does the company have this time? What is the skills level of the person who will update the website? Can he/she do HTML or there’s a need in a Content Management System (CMS)?
11. What is your deadline for completing the site and your budget?
    There’re a lot of clients with unrealistic expectations. They want you to build a website compared to indeed with almost no budget and in a week. Your purpose is to make a realistic time and budget clear.