It is a big job to design a website.
If you want your website to be successful, you have to carefully plan it.
There are many moving parts that determine the success of your website.
Before you start building your website, you must answer some key questions.
Background questions:
#1 – What is the purpose of your website? If you can’t answer that question in measurable terms, your website will never live up to its potential. Your website must become part of your overall strategy.
#2 – What are your goals for your site?
#3 – What type of website do you want, lead generation, brochure, e-commerce?
#4 – Who is in charge of your website project?
#5 – What is your budget to build your website?
#6 – What is your timeline?
#7 – When do you want to start?
#8 – By what date do we have to complete your website?
Background questions to ask if it is a website redesign.
#9 – What do you like about your current website? Even if you are ready for a website redesign, you might still want to keep some parts of your website.
#10 – What website changes do you want to see?
#11 – What do you dislike about your website now?
#12 – What are visitors complain about?
#13 – What new website features do you want to see?
#14 – What is the admin login to your current website?
#15 – Can you provide the hosting login credentials to your website?
#16 – Does your current website host provide excellent service?
#17 – Do you have a website platform already such as WordPress?
#18 – How much traffic does your site get per month?
#19 – What percentage is organic traffic?
#20 – What percentage is paid traffic?
#21 – What percentage of the traffic is from mobile devices?
#22 – What percentage of the traffic is from desktop and laptop computers?
#23 – What are your most visited web pages?
#24 – What is the bounce rate for your site?
#25 – What is your current site conversion rate for sales, prospects, or leads?
#26 – Is your website responsive?
#27 – How many backlinks are there for your site?
#28 – How many of your pages are indexed?
#29 – Do you send regular email marketing communications?
Design related questions:
#30 – Do you want to show your phone number in the header area?
#31 – Do you want to display your address in the footer area?
#32 – What is the most important thing for you about your new design?
#33 – What are your 2-3 favorite website designs?
#34 – Do you have any specific photos for us to use?
#35 – Do you have the required rights to use those photos?
#36 – Can you provide high-resolution photos?
#37 – Do you want to add any PDF files?
#38 – Do you want to add any audio or video?
#39 – How many audio or video files will be part of your site?
#40 – Are there parts of other websites that you would like to see on your own site?
#41 – What color scheme will you use for your site?
#42 – What CMYK colors do you use for your business logo?
#43 – Can you provide us your logo in a vector format?
#44 – What colors are you using on your marketing materials such as brochures, catalogs, mailers, etc?
#45 – How will the website design show your corporate values?
#46 – What features do you want to include?
#47 – Do you want us to create a favicon?
#48 – What images are we using for the design?
#49 – Do you need help finding stock photos, if you don’t have your own images?
#50 – What should be included within your navigation?
#51 – Are your visitors require accessible features such as screen reader or larger fonts?
#52 – Do you want a responsive, mobile-friendly website?
#53 – Who will give final approval of the design?
Marketing related questions:
#54 – Do you have a website marketing plan?
#55 – Who is your ideal customer?
#56 – What is your tagline?
#57 – What is your unique value proposition?
#58 – Who are your competitors?
#59 – How will you differentiate your website from the competition?
#60 – Why would customers do business on your website instead on your competitors’?
#61 – What is it that your competitors do well on their websites?
#62 – Are there features on your competitors’ websites that you want on your website?
#63 – What call-to-action will you use?
#64 – Will you build an email subscriber list?
#65 – What keywords do you want your website rank for?
#66 – What is your search engine rank for those keywords?
#67 – Do you want your images optimized for search?
#68 – Do you have an email marketing account such as Mailchimp?
#69 – Do you have SMART (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, Timely) website goals?
#70 – What are the deadlines to reach your website goals?
#71 – Do you have a marketing baseline?
#72 – Do you use marketing automation software?
#73 – Do you have a budget for A/B testing?
#74 – Do you want to offer any downloadable materials such as books, reports, white papers, etc?
Website content related questions:
#75 – What content will be part of your homepage?
#76 – What content should always be visible?
#77 – What content should be above the fold?
#78 – How many web pages are we creating?
#79 – What types of content do you plan on publishing, text, video, audio, infographics, etc?
#80 – Do you have the content written?
#81 – Do you want help with proofreading?
#82 – Do you need help with writing the website content?
#83 – Do you want any content cross promotion within your site?
#84 – Can you share the content cross promotion details?
#85 – Do you want visitors to be able to share web page content?
#86 – Do you have your content formatted?
#87 – Do you have multi-language requirements?
#88 – Do you have an editorial calendar?
#89 – Do you want a blog feature?
#90 – Do you want people to be able to comment on your blog posts?
#91 – Do you want to personalize content, to target different types of visitors?
#92 – How often will you be updating your website content?
Technical questions:
#93 – Does your website need to integrate with any third party websites?
#94 – Do you want a site search feature?
#95 – Do you need a calendar feature?
#96 – How many forms does your website need?
#97 – What fields are going to be part of the forms?
#98 – Do you want to forms to be emailed to a specific person?
#99 – Do you want to save the form submission to a database?
#100 – Do you have experience with a Content Management System (CMS)?
#101 – What website CMS platform will you use?
#102 – Do you want an online chat feature?
#103 – What website hosting service will you use?
#104 – Do you need help moving to a new website host?
#105 – Are you going to use a shared, dedicated, or cloud website hosting service?
#106 – Do you need help finding a website host?
#107 – Do expect large traffic spikes?
#108 – Do you have a domain name registered?
#109 – Do you need help finding a good domain name?
#110 – Do you need help registering a domain name?
#111 – Who is your domain registrar?
#112 – Do you have your login credentials to your domain registrar?
#113 – When does your domain name registration expire?
#114 – Do you require a payment feature?
#115 – Do you need e-commerce requirements?
#116 – Do you have a credit card gateway?
#117 – Do you have a merchant account?
#118 – Do you want to accept PayPal for payment?
#119 – Do you need multiple levels of access?
#120 – Do you want a password protected area?
#121 – Which web pages will be inside the password protected area?
#122 – Do you have a Google Analytics account?
#123 – Can you provide us with the login credentials?
#124 – Do you have a Google Webmaster Tools account?
#125 – Does your country require that your website states that it uses cookies?
#126 – Do you plan to post audio files to your site?
#127 – Do you want to run ads on your site?
#128 – Do you have a budget for user testing prior to launch?
#129 – Will your legal team need to review the site prior to launch?
Management and website maintenance questions:
#130 – What is your yearly budget to maintain and update your website?
#131 – Who is going to maintain your website?
#132 – What will the website maintenance look like, weekly, monthly, yearly?
#133 – Would you like instructions on how to update your website content?
#134 – Do you want additional training to edit your site?
photo credit: E-commerce
