16 Most Common Types of Customer Needs
Wednesday 24
Web Development Common Brief
1. What is your budget?
- By being open and frank about your available budget, we can create a realistic proposal for the project and manage your expectations from the start.
- A freelancer may seem cheaper initially but you are paying for one individual’s skills and experience.
- A web develment company with marketing knowledge brings the combined skills and experience of its team, and the reputation and recommendations that come from working with a greater number of clients. The support and ongoing site maintenance is often better too!
- When do you need the site to be completed and live? By being honest about budget and timeframe, we can plan an appropriate work schedule.
2. What is your business?
- How big is the company and how many employees?
- What is the history?
- What are the company values?
- What are the short term and long term goals of the business?
- Who are your competitors?
- How do you differ from your competitors?
- What is your USP (Unique Selling Point) ?
- Who are your customers and prospects?
- What ten words would you use to describe your company?
Don’t assume we will already understands everything about your business. A local company’s website will be entirely different to that of a global company. Is one of the aims of a new site to appeal to a wider audience perhaps? Or meet the needs of your current market more efficiently? The demographic of your target market will significantly affect the look and feel of the site. An explanation of the business decision behind getting a new site is often really helpful.
3. What kind of website do you want?
- Why do you want a new website?
- What did you like and dislike about the old one?
- What DON’T you want from a new site?
- What other websites do you like and what is it you like about them? (These don’t have to be industry specific!)
- What do you want your customers to do with the site? (Is it to encourage purchase, to inform or educate? etc)
- What are your long term plans for the site?
- Who will liase with the designer and provide copy and images?
- Who will be responsible for updating the site? (How tech-savvy are they? This may prompt a discussion of maintenance agreement options)
Be specific about what you like about another website – is it the overall design, typography, layout, colours, images, ease of use, the atmosphere the design creates etc? If you have different long term plans for the site, we may be able save you money in the long run by developing a CMS that can accommodate different requirements in the future.
4. Content and Function
- What pages do you want and how many?
- How much content is there and when/by whom will it be written?
- Do you want to gain subscribers? (RSS or newsletter)
- Do you require certain social integration with your networks? (Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook etc)
- Do you require a site search facility?
- Do you require a Googlemap?
- Do you require an online form?
- Do you need a Domain for your website?
- Do you require Hosting for Website & Emails?
By answering all of these questions you have written a great design brief. To write the ultimate one, however, you can provide a sketch of page layout, of headings, of how you want pages to interact with each other, of where you want certain images placed etc .
