When designing a website for your client you need a checklist. This consistent approach allows you to not only gather the right information, but better estimate the costs associated with the development of the website. It can save both you and your client valuable time, while also help everyone to stay on the right page.

1. What goal to you have in mind for your website?

This can reveal some crucial information for the design and overall feel for the website.

2. Describe your organization in a sentence or two.

This helps reveal the mission statement and the organizational culture that you need to recreate through their website. Asking this question can work wonders, especially when limited to a couple of sentences.

3. What sets your company apart from your competitors?

This question allows you to hone in on your clients most valuable possession, while alerting the world about it as well.

4. Do you have a logo?

Generally clients will let you know this, but it is a good idea to ask this from the start. Sometimes you can start developing, finding out later that the entire color scheme and look was supposed to mirror their current logo — that you forgot to ask about.

5. What is your budget for this project?

This is a must ask question. If your client can’t afford your services, then it’s better to find out now — rather than finding out that just the first draft consumed their entire budget.

6. What is your deadline for completing this project?

This can help both parties know exactly what they are up against. If they need a website in two weeks, and you have ten other clients saying the same thing, well you get the point.

7. Please tell me five other website that you like and admire.

This leads both of you down the same path. Otherwise you can create twenty drafts, and later find out that you could have made one in order to go to the next step.

8. Do you plan on selling any of your products and services online?

This can change the playing field as creating an e-commerce website can be entirely more in-depth than a general business website.

9. Are there other services that you would like to implement? (Newsletter, Blog, Forum, Classifieds etc.)

Once again, helping both parties.

And lastly…

10. Who is your target market?

Knowing this information and creating user persona’s can help everyone know what they are up against — and how to help bring those visitors to their website.

The questions from this blog post were inspired by Free Lance Switch’s post How to Extract the Facts with a Web Design Client Questionnaire