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Once you have understood what the client’s background and motivations are, it’s time to ask questions about the most important customer segment - the target audience. The audience, along with the features of the website, is what you will devote most of your time to as a freelancer and is quite important to understand.
Click here to download a list of possible questions for your questionnaire. These are a sampling of the possible questions you could ask your client, and they have been compiled from many sources around the web. There are by no means a comprehensive list and you should always include questions that are specific to the project if possible.
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[Pasan Premaratne] Once we have a clear picture of our client's motivations and goals,
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we need to think about the client's target audience and what they could gain out of the site.
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At the end of the day a website is built for the customer. It achieves a certain goal of the company, no doubt,
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but it will be used by a customer.
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So it should be built with that audience in mind.
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Our next set of questions will seek to understand more about the client's target audience.
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The first thing in this section is understanding who your client's target audience is.
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Who are they? What kinds of things do they do? What are their tastes and their preferences?
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In what ways do they use your client's products?
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Try to paint as clear a picture as you can of who the target audience is before you start working on a project in any way.
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All these factors will help influence and lead the direction of the project.
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Next ask them what emotions would they like their customers to feel when using their products.
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Even if they can't explain what they want on the site, clients can explain what they want their customers to feel about their product
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or when they use their website.
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Find out what these feelings are and how you can emulate them in your project.
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What is the primary action the user should take when coming to your site?
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And what does the client want the customer to do when landing on the website?
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Do you want to make the user buy a specific product or do you want them to sign up for a newsletter?
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Tie the desired audience actions in with the client's goals or outcomes for the website.
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After talking about goals and audiences, you can start to talk about what the client really wants to talk about—
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and that's website features.
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There's a couple things to keep in mind here. First, be very upfront about the development effort and the cost of building features.
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Second, don't try and get the client to suggest how the website should be built. That's your job.
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Your task should be to take the problems that the client has and convert them into specific solutions.
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If you were a doctor, you wouldn't ask your patient to tell you what medicine you should prescribe him.
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Instead you would ask about their symptoms, pains, and problems, and then offer a solution to remedy it.
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You're doing exactly the same thing.
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So when you talk about feature requests, try and get an idea for things that will make or break the project,
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but don't give the client the impression that their dictating the look and functionality of the website.
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Ask them what do they not want on the site.
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Often times clients won't know what they want on the site, and that's why they're hiring you; you're the expert.
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But clients will always know what they don't want, what they don't like.
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It might be easier for you to get them to list out these features that they're against having.
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This way you can offer solutions that are more in line with what they desire.
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This will also save you a lot of time from developing features that the client mentions, but then later says that they don't like at all.
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Ask them where the website content is coming from and who is responsible for updating it.
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Content on the website is very important, and it's what will complete the package.
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The website could require large amounts of text, marketing messages, photos, and logos.
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All this stuff needs to be given to you. And you need to figure out who is involved so you can get all that information from them.
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Lots of projects can get held up because you need certain information but don't know where to get it from.
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Figure out who is responsible, and get in touch with them immediately.
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Another thing you will want to find out is who is responsible for updating this content on the website and how web savvy they are.
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This allows you to understand the breadth and depth of your proposed solution.
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Will you need to implement a content management system, for example?
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Then ask them how the site is organized.
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Do you need to figure out how the site is implemented on your own or will they provide a site map for you?
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These are questions that eliminate unnecessary or additional work down the line
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because you weren't provided with the relevant information.
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Ask them if there are any sites they find compelling. What specifically do they like about these sites?
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Most clients know or should know their competitors' websites.
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Find out what they like and don't like about them. Clients also have a few sites in mind that they really like.
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Try and understand why they like these sites to give you a basic idea of the designs they have in mind.
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All right. That was it for the fun stuff. Now it's time to get into the administrative details.
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