Discovery questions for new website project

Are you preparing to have a new website created for your business or other project?

The following are helpful questions and guidelines to prepare for working with a website developer or designer on a website project. Some projects might be more complex, or more simple, but the following are the typical minimum details to consider for a successful website.

Background & Overview

  • Tell me about your business.
  • Do you currently have a website?
    • What is the domain name (Website URL)?
  • How would you briefly define your product or service offering?
  • What problem do you solve for your customers?
  • Describe your primary target audience (i.e. who are your clients?).
  • Where is your business located?
    • List all locations, if applicable.
  • Who are your direct competitors?
    • List their website domain names. if applicable.
    • What elements of these companies and/or their online activity would you like to model after in your redesign?
  • What makes you different?

Objectives

  • What is your number one objective in this project?
  • Do you have any other objectives? Can you rank them by priority?
  • Is there anything about your existing website that doesn’t work well?
  • Is there anything about your existing website that does work well?
  • Is there anything else you would like us to know about your business and this project?

Functionality

  • Describe any functionality included in the scope of this project.
    • Including any wireframes, outline, etc. (or send as a separate document)

Project Constraints

  • What is your desired date for go-live?
    • Note: Timeline for project completion depends largely on timely receipt of assets/content necessary for the project.

Content/Assets to Assemble

Where applicable. Files can be sent via email, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.

  • Project scope (depending on the specific project details and budget, we can work with you to create the project scope, wireframes, etc.)
  • High resolution logo
  • Brand or Style guide (i.e. color scheme, fonts, imagery, etc)
  • Website page hierarchy (sitemap)
  • Content for pages, articles, blog posts, etc.
  • Images
  • Testimonials
  • Videos or other Media
  • Other marketing collateral

Provide developer access to:

  • Google Analytics
  • Domain registrar
    • This would be the provider you registered your website domain name with. For example: Godaddy.com is a common domain registrar.
  • Current website hosting account
    • Cpanel and/or FTP access, if applicable.

 

Providing sufficient information about your business and project goals helps to set proper expectations and will allow your website developer/designer to provide you with the results you are looking for.