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One of the first questions asked when potential clients contact a web designer is usually some variant of “How much does a website cost?” That is a good question, but before any web designer can answer it, they need to ask a few questions of their own. It all depends on what sorts of features you are looking for.
Let’s dive right into those golden 11 questions
- What does your business do?
- Who is your target audience?
- Do you have your brand style guide?
- What action do you want your viewers to take?
- What does your website need to do?
- Do you already have your content written?
- Will you need a blog section?
- Do you know about SEO?
- Who are your competitors?
- What websites do you like and why?
- When is your deadline?
Let see them in detail below.
1. What does your business do?
This one is really crucial for you to share with web designers as they want to understand better about your business. Knowing more about what you do, and who you are is crucial to build a good relationship between both of you and web designers. Understanding your business will help web designers to build an effective website.
2. Who is your target audience?
Knowing and understanding your target audience is the number one factor that makes your website success. In real life, the way you engage with teenagers is different from how you might speak to the medical profession, expectant mother, etc. You need to share with your web designer who will visit your site and what they want to get from your site. Your target audience can help to inform your brand story, so it’s important to know exactly who you are selling your product or service to. Knowing about users or target audience ages, demographic details, the occupation will help you design the better user experience for your audience.
3. Do you have your brand style guide?
A brand style guide is a combination of many things such as typography, color scheme, icons and images for your brand or business. You may have already chosen colors and fonts for your physical marketing material – these decisions will help inform your website’s look as you want to be consistent in helping build your brand. When you engage your web designer, at least have an idea about that.
4. What action do you want your viewers to take?
Once your target audience has landed on your website, it is critical to have a clear idea of what you actually want them to do. Do you just want them to read and learn more information? Okay, you just need to make sure the navigation is clear and the text on the website is easy to read. Want them to make a donation? Let’s make sure you have more than one prominent link to your donations page. Want them to make a purchase from your web store? Let’s make sure to show some sample products on the home page, and offer a coupon code.
5. What does your website need to do?
It is a fact that your website will communicate information, using photography, text, and perhaps video. As web designers enter a new website project, the big question is to figure out what the website really needs to do. How many contact forms do you need? If you sell anything on the website and need to collect payment, what is your payment provider/gateway?
There are so many possibilities. With a clear understanding of the function your website will require, web designers will be able to provide an accurate estimate.
6. Do you already have your content written?
Before your web designer starts building, it is a good idea to have your content written for your website. This will inform the layout of the site and if they already know exactly what written content they are dealing with, the web designer will be able to know exactly how to weigh elements on a page.
7. Will you need a blog section?
If your website includes a blog, you’re recommended to prepare at least 3 posts that your potential customer would be interested to read. This will help your customers find you faster and start establishing trust with them.
8. Do you know about SEO?
Many people indulge in the illusion that everybody will find and interact with their website just because they built it, and then traffic will automatically increase. We’re sorry to burst your bubble but it doesn’t work like that.
So, optimizing SEO is a must for your website. Think of search engines like phone books. People use them to find ways to reach out to others they are looking for. Then, if your website isn’t on the books’ first page, or not even on the list, people will for sure ignore your site.
There are two types of SEO, on-page SEO and off-page SEO. Your web designer will help you with your on-page SEO and mostly you need to do off-page SEO on your own. You need to share your website through all social medias, build a backlink or maybe hire an SEO expert.
9. Who are your competitors?
Having knowledge about your competitors will help you and your web designer to design the website accordingly.
You should ask these questions:
- What is the best thing about your competitor?
- Does their website appear on the first page of google search?
10. What websites do you like and why?
You can share to your web designer what website you like, either you like the typography of the website, the color, the font or anything you like on that website. Make your web designer understand and they will help you design an outstanding website according to your preferences.
11. When is your deadline?
You may not have any context for how long the process takes if you have never been a part of a website development project. The answer to that question is “it depends.” The complexity of the design and the number of pages are always a factor that can speed up or slow down your website development project. Time for communication, review, creating draft designs, testing are also some factors that can speed up or slow down your web development.
So you need to discuss with your web designer and give full cooperation with them if you want them to meet your deadline.
Conclusion
You need to make your web designer understand what you need by sharing the above information. Your web designer might have additional questions other than listed above. That’s all because they want to help you build your website following your requirements and preferences.
Share your requirements to us and we will build your outstanding website. CONTACT US now!
