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Website Design: Discovery Phase

This phase of the process is where we ask you a bit about your business and your brand to help us gain a better understanding about what design directions might be appropriate to explore.

Take your time to read the questions below, make some notes if you like, and if a question isn’t relevant, just ignore it. Once you are ready, send us an email, let us know your availability and we will arrange a call to talk things through.

After our call, we will compile the key points from our discussion into a scoping document and then send over to you for approval before advising you on next steps. Any questions just give us a shout!

 


 

Your Business & Brand

What does your company do?

What products/ services do you offer? What do your sales and fulfilment processes look like?

Can you summarise what you offer?

What do you offer customers in 1 short paragraph? Do you have any corporate core values?

What marketing do you do?

What have you done and what do you plan to do in the future? Are you active on social media?

What are your marketing challenges?

When it comes to marketing (in general), what goals do you struggle to hit?

 


 

Your Competitors & Audience

Who are your main competitors?

And why should people do business with you and not them? What makes you stand out?

What are their websites like?

What aspects of theirs sites do you think work well? And what aspects don’t work so well?

Can you describe your target audience types?

Do certain products and / or services speak to different audience types?

Why would visitors go to your website?

What do they want to come away with, and what do you want them to do?

 


 

Project Logistics

Who will be involved in the project?

Anyone internal? Any other contractors? Who will give final approval?

Do you have a domain name?

Do you have login details that would allow us to access and manage your domain settings?

What are your timelines?

When would you like to launch your new site?

Do you have a budget that we should be aware of?

Do you have any sort of budget for the website that you are trying to meet? (E.g. around £1,000, between £1,000 and £2,000, between £2,000 and £3,000, more than £3,000?)

Do you have an existing website?

Click here if yes

Are we updating or re-creating?

Do you want us to amend / improve your existing website or build you a new one?

Where is your current website hosted?

Do you have login info that would allow us to manage settings? Do you plan to move to a new host?

What do you like about your current website?

Is there any functionality or options on there that you would like to keep (other than content)?

What are your frustrations with your current website?

Difficult to update? Difficult to navigate? Doesn’t instil trust? not optimised for mobile?

How do your current visitors behaviour?

Why do you think visitors currently go to your website? And do they visit more at certain points?

Will you be updating and reusing content?

And/or images from your current site? Do you need help creating / sourcing anything new?

 


 

Your New Site

What is the purpose of your new website?

Is it an information hub?, a shop window?, a way to generate leads?, a selling tool?

What are your project goals?

What are the things that are most important in the design of your new site. What types of actions do you want your visitors to take? Do you plan to sell anything through your site?

How many pages will your site need?

(Estimated) And what might they be? (e.g. Home, About, Services, Portfolio, Blog, Contact etc.) Do you have a proposed sitemap for the new website or will this be part of the scope of work?

What style of website would you like?

Any specific visual goals? Are there any websites with designs that you like? (from any industry) What about those websites would you like to be incorporated into your website?

Do you have any reference material?

Do you have any brand guidelines covering things like colours and fonts? Do you have any other materials that the site needs to match with in some way (brochures, press materials, etc.)?

 


 

Functionality Requirements

Do you need a content management system?

Do you have a preference (e.g. WordPress, SquareSpace etc.) or would you like us to make suggestions?

What features might you want on your website?

What types of things do you see on other websites that you think work well (or don’t work well)?

  • Slider
  • Photo / video gallery
  • Case studies / portfolio
  • Blog / Latest News
  • Testimonials
  • Responsive design (for devices)
  • Online chat or forum
  • Subscription services
  • Shopping cart system (e-commerce)
  • Multiple levels of access
  • Content approval processes
  • Events calendar
  • Booking system
  • Contact forms (other contact info?)
  • Social sharing
  • Social feed
  • Interactive Google map
  • Internal site search
  • Privacy or cookies policy
  • SSL certificate

Do you want a blog?

Who will be responsible for creating your posts? Do you want visitors to be able to comment on posts?

Do you need memberships or passwords?

Will visitors need to login to your site? If so, why? Do you need any password-protected areas?

Any third-party applications?

Will there be any third-party applications that will need to be integrated into the site?

What information must be on the home page?

And what features, sections or information do you want emphasised across the site?

Do you want Google Analytics data for this site?

Do you have a Google Analytics account? Can you provide us with access?

Do you need any other specific functionality?

That has not been addressed yet? e.g. Do you have any specific mobile requirements?

 


 

Content & Media

Do you have a logo?

Does it need updating or does one need creating? If you have one, can you provide design files?

Do you have content ready?

If not, when do you think it might be ready? Will we be importing and formatting it for you?

Do you have images ready?

Do you have rights to use them? Can you provide hi-res files? Will we need to find and / or create any other images for the website?

Will you have video on the new website?

Will you be providing these files or is creation of this content part of the scope of work? Do you have a video hosting service or will you be uploading videos to Vimeo or YouTube to embed onto your site?

 


 

Search Engine Optimisation

Do you need help with SEO?

If yes, how much do you know about SEO and do you know what aspects of SEO you need help with?

How would YOU search for your products or services?

What words or phrases would “you” type into Google to search for your products or services?

Do you have an existing SEO strategy?

Click here if yes

What keywords or key phrases would you like to target?

Do you have existing content that can support these keywords / phrases? Does your existing website and content rank for these keywords / phrases? What are your top-performing keywords? And which site pages rank highest in SERPs?

Do you have someone managing your SEO?

Do you have someone who reviews content for SEO best practices and / or will be creating unique meta-titles and descriptions per page / post going forward?

Do you have a Google Analytics account?

Or a Google Search Console account? Do you know how many visits you get each month, and what your most popular pages are? Where are your site visits sourced from? What % are on mobile devices?

 


 

Post launch

Will you require any training?

Do you or your team need training for making website updates, publishing content etc.?

Will you require any ongoing support?

How often will you update content on your site? Will you need help with this? Will you need us to carry out any ongoing site or plugin updates? Will you need any ongoing SEO support?