Product development
You’re over the moon that you have been referred to a new client for a website development project. But, despite your enthusiasm, you are nervous to meet with the client to define the project plan, next steps and scope.
Here’s several reasons why client meetings are essential before starting website development projects:
- Understand the client’s needs and requirements: Meeting with the client enables you to understand the client’s specific needs and requirements. This knowledge can help the developer create a website that meets the client’s needs and satisfies their goals.
- Establish project scope and timeline: Provides an opportunity to better understand the client’s project scope and timeline. By doing this will help you to plan and allocate resources effectively, reducing the risk of delays or scope creep.
- Set expectations: This allows you to set expectations for the project. This includes discussing project deliverables, timelines, and communication channels. This ensures that the client understands what to expect from you and their project responsibilities.
- Build a relationship: Building a solid relationship with a client can lead to repeat business and positive referrals, which can help you grow your client base.
- Identify potential issues: Meeting with a client can help you identify potential problems or roadblocks that may arise during the project. By identifying these issues early, you can plan and prepare accordingly, minimising the impact on the project timeline and budget.
Overall, meeting with a client before starting a website development project is crucial for ensuring a successful project outcome.
So what happens during your first meeting with a client?
The first meeting is typically a discovery meeting. It’s an opportunity for both parties to understand if they are a great fit for each other. Always ask questions tailored to the client’s expectations, requirements, and metrics for success.
To help you navigate your first meeting with a client, the questions listed below are ‘must-ask’ and also ‘nice-to-ask‘. Whilst exploring these questions, this article also explains why you must seek answers before commencing work on a website project:
Q1 – What is your business about?
Q2 – Who do you want to target?
Q3 – Do you want to build a new website or redesign an existing one?
Q4 – What specific features do you want on your website?
Q5 – What actions do you want them to perform on the website?
Q6 – Are there competitors’ websites you’d like us to review?
Q7 – Do you have a domain and hosting platform in mind?
Q8 – Who handles the maintenance of the website?
Q9 – Would you like to implement some SEO tactics?
Q10 – Who will provide the content needed for the website?
Q11 – What’s your budget and timeline for this project?
Why should you ask these questions?
Explained below are the reasons you are required to ask your clients the questions mentioned above.
Q1 – What is your business about?
This question helps get the client to talk about their business from their point of view, highlighting their business goals, company culture, offerings, goals, competitors, milestones achieved and target users.
Q2 – Who do you want to target?
Dig further into who the primary and secondary target users are for the company’s offerings. Request to see data that indicates the demography and psychographics of the users or audience and dive deeper to understand why they want to target them using a website, app or an online platform
Q3 – Do you want to build a new website or redesign an existing one?
Find out whether the client needs an entirely new website or wants to enhance the old one whilst keeping the good components of the website running. Hiring a website developer becomes necessary for business owners when they realise their website isn’t operating as it should.
Q4 – What specific features do you want on your website?
Find out if your client has specific features they wish to see on their new website. Certain features are an industry standard. For instance, if they own a grocery store, they’ll need to include their hours of operation and grocery shopping features, whereas if the client owns a logistics firm, they would want an online booking tool to process shipments. It’s important to establish what website features, additional features and services your client wants to advertise on the website.
Q5 – What actions do you want them to perform on the website?
It’s important to know the actions your clients want their visitors or users to perform on their website, so you can recommend and understand what features need to be built on the website. For example, if your client wants their website visitors to sign up to their mailing list, then there will need to be a discussion about creating lead magnets and newsletter opt-ins, etc.
Q6 – Are there competitors’ websites you’d like us to review?
It’s important to understand your client’s primary and secondary competitors and their websites. These key insights can provide a good overview of the competitive market and can help advise the web development process.
Q7 – Do you have a domain and hosting platform in mind?
An excellent domain captures the name and offerings of the business, and with the aid of a reliable hosting solution, clients can enjoy quick web page loads, enough storage space, and other security features. To determine if the client needs assistance choosing the best hosting option, discuss with them the benefits and drawbacks of various hosting platforms.
Q8 – Who handles the maintenance of the website?
Creating a website doesn’t end with launching it. There must be maintenance in place. Discuss with the client who will be in charge of frequent maintenance and implementation of changes. It is imperative to ask because not all business owners know this. You must establish whether the client expects you to manage the maintenance. Explain what website maintenance entails if they are unsure, and how updating the website functions as a professional will be advantageous for their business.
Q9 – Would you like to implement some SEO tactics?
Not all business owners have SEO teams. Hence it is essential to ask questions and align with clients’ expectations about their search engine optimisation needs. For example, discuss the benefits of improving their website ranking on search engines such as Google, Bing, etc. If this is a service you cannot provide, recommend some partners of yours or experts that can help.
Q10 – Who will provide content needed for the website?
A professionally built website must have compelling content tailored to the business’s target audience and interest. You must consider your clients’ overall content strategies when developing a website. Before starting the project, you must establish in advance who will provide content for the website, as well as deciding on if the client would like a website blog and what their preferred content management system would be (for example, WordPress)
Q11 – What’s your budget and timeline for this project?
Finally, find out how much budget the client is willing to allocate to this project. It is important to be open and honest during the first call about the costs and outline the elements that affect website development costs, such as the number of pages, features, the system for content management, hosting platform and maintenance cost, among many others. Getting this done helps to avoid misunderstandings, scope creep whilst providing client satisfaction.
Conclusion
A website development project is delicate, and a lot can go wrong during the course of the project. Asking questions before starting a website development project is essential and sets you on the right foot. The questions above will allow you to discover more about your client’s target market, fundamental value proposition, objective and other important factors to consider for website development.
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