Creating a new website isn’t always as simple as snapping your fingers. You can create a basic website that will give you basic results; however, there are many questions to answer if you hope to optimize its performance. In this series, we’ll discuss how to create a new website.
As a project manager it is important that you are asking important questions before you start designing a website. It’s vital to ask questions around the client’s goals, internal philosophy and how they envision their end product. Bottom line, you want to know as much about what their business and their end goals before you even start thinking about design.
Below are sample questions along with a few explanations that I ask a client before starting the project:
Who is your target audience?
A website designed to appeal to 30-something professionals is going to be different than one aimed at young newlyweds or retirees. It’s important that you have a good grasp on who your client’s customers are. It affects not only the look and feel of the site, but may also affect usability and accessibility issues
What is your budget?
Finding out a client’s budget before the project begins is vital, what if their budget does not match what you designed? You have not only wasted time but money is the most important.
Are you prepared to invest in the site post-launch?
It is important to let the client know that a website or an application is a process and not only a project. Will be necessary to put significative budget for maintenance phase in order to keep the project constantly updated.
Are you working under a deadline to have the site live?
The project will be complete once it becomes live. Preparing a site for going live is a combination of choices made before the project starts. It is important to focus on tracking performance, using an according methodology and prioritize items.
What are your long-term plans for your site?
It is a good practice to know what the client will want to do in the future with their site in order we can make allowances in the design and coding now. This practice allows us to think in advance to avoid a possible site rebuild from scratch.
How are you going to handle your analytics?
This is important because you want a client to be able to track their success after the launch of the site.
These are just suggestions, but if your web development company did not ask you some of these questions, you should probably follow up to make sure they have the right vision for your company.
