It all starts with a phone call or email or chat on the soccer field. Someone wants a website for their personal use, their business, their organization, their band, their whatever. Usually I’ll get about ten sentences of information about what they want to do and it usually looks like this:

“I want it to be like the Nike site. Really cutting edge, 2.0 type stuff. I don’t want Flash; it’s bad. I really like bold colors, maybe green and purple. Award winning too. And what’s the soonest you can have it done? I’d like to have it done in a week or as soon as possible. I’m on a tight budget but if you do a good job, I’ve got future projects.”

Notice there is no mention of a budget. I have no idea how the site fit’s into anything their trying to accomplish and their expectations for time versus quality design are unrealistic. At this point, I usually send them my Pre-Project Questionnaire (see attached below) and never hear back from them again. Not a very good business move, eh? After years of dealing with clients, this strategy has helped both the client and myself avoid disaster before we even begin. Why?

I don’t expect clients to know how to design and build websites. That’s why their coming to me. I do expect them to understand who they are and what the website is trying to achieve. More often than not, they don’t, and they want to jump right into the design and dictate content, structure and style without a clue of how the site fits into their overall business/organization/personal goals. The best clients already know the who and how already. Then they ask me to help them get there, without dictating colors,  style, pages, information architecture, etc.  When they don’t know who they are, they either ask me for help or go do their homework and then get back with me. I have a brand building process that can help them understand who they are and get them to where they want to be (for better or for worse).

Enter the Pre-Project Questionnaire. As I mentioned before, it winnows out mutually destructive designer-client relationships before they start. It also provides me with all the necessary information to begin a meaningful dialogue with a committed client and provide an estimate grounded in reality. With the redesign of this site, I’ve filled out the Pre-Project Questionnaire just like I would expect of my clients (see attached below). If the client’s done their homework and been honest and thorough in the Questionnaire, then we’re off to a great start.

Pre-Project Questionnaire Template >