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101 invaluable questions to build your Web Design Client Questionnaire
28 October 2009 | Category: Clients | 4 comments |
The Web Design Questionnaire is probably the most important element of the Web Design Project Planning. But, creating a questionnaire can be dreadful even for the most experienced freelancers.
With these 101 invaluable questions, you’ll be able to build an awesome questionnaire template and adapt it to the client in order to gather all the information you need to create outstanding websites.
Introduction
Questionnaire design is often highly time-consuming and therefore overlooked. That’s why I decided to write this article… Well, and that was a good opportunity to improve my own questionnaire template too.
Please note that these 101 questions are not a ready-to-use sample questionnaire yet. In fact, the client won’t probably be willing to answer more than 20 or 30 questions at first. But, all of them will come in handy sooner or later (for example in further email conversations).
At the end of this article, you will find links to many interesting questionnaires examples. They will make questionnaire design even easier for you!
COMPANY-RELATED QUESTIONS
Contact Information
1. Company legal name:
2. Address:
3. City:
4. State:
5. Zip:
6. Telephone:
7. Fax:
8. URL (example: www.woobzine.com):
9. Who is our contact person from your company?
10. First Name:
11. Last Name:
12. E-mail:
13. Telephone:
14. Cell Phone:
15. What is the best way to contact you?
16. When? What’s your time zone?
17. Who has the final approval on the project?
18. Please provide relevant contact information:
Company General Information
19. What’s the purpose of your company?
20. What are the long term goals of your company?
21. Please describe your company in a few sentences (age, size, growth, etc.):
22. Please describe your services and/or products in a few sentences:
23. Please describe your corporate culture (or company philosophy) in a few sentences:
24. Who are your main competitors?
25. How are you different from your competitors?
26. Why do you believe people should do business with you rather than with your competitors?
PROJECT-RELATED QUESTIONS
Overview & Strategy
27. Site name? Domain name (example: www.woobzine.com)?
28. Do you want a new website or a redesign?
29. Please describe the primary purpose of the site:
30. How should your site stand out from those of your competitors?
31. Please list the reasons why you want a website. If more than one item applies, number in order of importance:
- Establish and or improve a web presence
- Improve brand and / or logo recognition
- Describe your products and services
- Provide customer support and / or after-sales service
- Increase market share and visibility of your company
- Generate sales transactions (e-commerce website)
- Build, develop and centralize information (surveys, investigations, etc.)
- Support existing advertising campaign or marketing strategy
- Confirm the technical leadership of your company
- Raise funds (donations, charity)
32. Are there any other goals you intend to accomplish with this website?
33. What action do you want to inspire to people who visit your website?
- The purchase of a product or services
- A visit to your premises
- To contact you by mean of telephone / fax / email / post
- To request more detailed information
- To send information regarding themselves
- To comment on your products or services
- To become a member of the site
- To search for information
- Other – please describe:
34. How do you envision that the site meets these goals?
How will the website help your company to reach their long-term goals?
Brand & Target Audience
35. Please describe your potential customers and / or users that you want to attract to your site (age, gender, industry, online frequency, income level, purchasing habits, computer skills, etc.):
36. Why / how is your site necessary for your target audience?
37. Where do your customers usually obtain information? (Radio, word of mouth, newspapers, etc.)
38. What does the target audience feel and think about your company?
39. What is the overall message you are trying to convey to your target audience? (For example: cost-effective, secure, reliable, efficient, etc.)
Identity & Design
40. Do you have a slogan or a tagline that clearly describes what you offer in terms of benefits or features? (Example: Think small. Just do it. Have it your way. Broadcast Yourself.)
41. What feeling or message do you want your site to convey to those who view it?
42. Have you researched your online competition so you have an idea of what you do and don’t want on your site? If so, please provide some examples:
43. Do you have a logo? If so, please provide digital copies and/or visual examples of your logo. If not, do you want to have one created?
44. What do you want to use for the header (company name, website name, logo, etc.)?
45. Please name three sites you like. Why do you like them?
46. Please name three sites that you do not like. Why don’t you like them?
47. Please describe your website’s desired look and feel by using adjectives and short phrases (illustrated, professional, colorful, dark, etc.):
48. Do you have any existing brand colors?
49. Do you have a color scheme that you would like to use?
50. Do you have any colors that you want to avoid?
51. Are there any printed or digital documents (text, advertisements, images, photos, etc.) which the site should match, or from which it can draw inspiration? (If yes, please attach to this questionnaire.)
52. Please describe and attach to this questionnaire, any visual elements or styles you would like us to use (including elements from existing marketing materials / sites / existing files):
53. Do we need to take photos of you, your staff, your premises, or your products?
Marketing
54. If you were using a search engine like Google, what words or phrases would you use to find your site? (Please write no more than 10 keywords, and order by importance.)
55. Would you like your site to be submitted manually to the major search engines?
56. Other than what search engines will produce, do you have an existing plan or marketing strategy to promote your website? (Examples: Adding URL to all business materials, newspaper and magazine ads, internet banner advertising, links exchange, adding site to Internet award programs, etc.)
57. Would you like us to take over all or part of the marketing strategy to promote your site? (Adwords campaign, social marketing, PageRank, etc.)
58. Would you like any additional design services to be packaged with your new website? (Business cards, envelops, letterheads, etc.)
59. How to you plan to entice your visitors to return on the website?
Content
60. What is the approximate number of pages you’ll have in your website?
61. Make a list of pages to include in your website (example: home, presentation, services, articles, contact, FAQ, links, sitemap, resources.).
62. If you wish, you can also make a quick draft of the site structure:
63. Please select the items and / or features that will be part of your site:
- JavaScript (jQuery)
- Searchable database + form
- Flash
- Chat / Conference Room
- Streaming audio
- Newsletter / E-mail list sign-up
- Streaming video
- Customer Survey / Polls
- Illustration
- Product Reviews
- Testimonials
- Landing / call-to-action pages
- Map
- Information/request forms
- Registration / Customer Log-in
- Image Gallery
- Prize drawings
- E-Commerce solution
- Forum
- Online Payment
- Calendar of Events
- Blog
- RSS Feed
- Portfolio
- Uploads
- E-zine
- Downloads
- Custom Database
64. Please describe any other feature you’d like to see incorporated into your site.
65. You can also ask questions about the features described above:
66. What do you not want on your site, in terms of content, text, etc.?
67. How many new pages will you publish each month on your site?
68. Where is the new website content (text, pictures, etc.) coming from?
69. Who’s responsible for updating it?
70. Is it ready for use on your website?
Hosting
71. Do you already have a domain name (example: www.woobzine.com)?
72. If not, what domain name do you want for your site?
73. Do you already have subscribed to a hosting company?
74. If not, would you like us to take care of your website hosting? (We provide regular security back-ups, maintenance and special support for the websites we host)
Updates
75. How often do you foresee needing to update your website (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc.)?
76. What kind of updates do you foresee (design/layout changes, graphics changes, content changes, price changes, other changes)?
77. Would you like us to update your site or would you like to be responsible for updates?
78. Would you like to be able to easily update your own content without any special software or programming knowledge?
79. If so, do you want us to use any specific CMS or web enabled administration system (Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, etc.)?
Maintenance & Optimization
80. Is there a webmaster in your team or someone who will be responsible for maintaining your site?
81. If so, can you give us links or examples so that we can evaluate their skills?
82. What information and statistics do you want to know about your visitors? (Views, country, previous site visited, etc.)?
83. Who will analyze the statistics and optimize the site based on results?
84. How will you measure the success of the website?
85. Would you like the usability of your site to be tested and evaluated by a dedicated team (5 persons test to simulate 85% of visitors’ behavior)?
86. Would you like us to provide training to your staff in order to meet your future needs?
Website redesign
87. What does your target audience feel and think about the current website?
88. What areas of the current site are successful and why?
89. What are the needed areas of improvement from the current website?
90. How do you expect the new website to improve your business?
Logo Design
91. Do you need a new logo or a logo redesign?
92. Do you have any specific imagery in mind for your logo?
93. If you have a tag line, would you like it stated alongside your logo?
94. What adjectives should best describe your logo?
95. How do you prefer your logo to be worded or written out? (Example: woobzineisgreat or woobzine is great)
96. How would you like the typography to appear? (Example: script, bold, light, hand drawn, custom lettering)
97. What logos appeal to you and why? (Please provide links and/or visual examples)
WORK-RELATED QUESTIONS
Work philosophy
98. Where did you hear about us?
99. What are your reasons for choosing us for this project?
100. What is most important to you: price, quality or speed?
101. So that we offer you an appropriate estimate, please choose one of the following:
- Expensive = Excellent + Fast
- Slow = Excellent + Cheap
- Inferior = Fast + Cheap
102. What are the determining factors of failure or success for the project?
Budget & Time
103. What is your budget for this project?
104. What is your monthly budget for maintaining the site?
105. What is your monthly budget for marketing the site?
106. For each project we do, we allege funds for the development of sites for charities and / or humanitarians. Would you like to be involved?
107. We require a 25% to 50% deposit (depending on the scale of the project) to insure we get paid for the job. Conversely, if we are unable to follow out the work we have been set to do, we will refund you. Does that seem fair to you?
108. What’s your preferred deadline, time frame or exact date of completion?
109. How often do you want updates on the progress of the project?
Brief & Feedback
110. Please supply us with a brief description of the project.
111. Do you have additional comments? Questions? Feedback on the questionnaire? Or simply a few words to tell us?
Questionnaires examples and links
- A good questionnaire template for your logo design needs (my logo-related questions are almost all *cough* stolen *cough* from there.
- How to extract facts with a Web Design Client Questionnaire (this one is damn good too… I just love FreelanceSwitch)
- Another good sample questionnaire
- Creating a questionnaire: essential questions
- A long sample questionnaire (I love the budget answer: “over 100 000$”)
- Many questionnaires examples
- Short but effective questionnaire design
- Sample questionnaire with freedom for the client
And don’t forget my own article on the Web Design Project Preparation. It features many interesting quotations about the client questionnaire design.
What now?
Again, you can’t ask your clients all these 101 questions… it’s too much and the client would probably run away. My advice is to build your questionnaire template with something like 20 questions. Then you should add those that match best your specific clients’ needs.
Another trick is to use two documents: one for the company-related questions and one for the questionnaire template itself. Even if the quantity of questions doesn’t change, many clients will find it easier to fill out two small questionnaires than a big one.
I hope you found this article useful! If at least one person buy me a coffee to show their appreciation, I’ll give you all a sample questionnaire based on my own Web Design Client Questionnaire.
Many thanks! And don’t forget to spread the word!
Related Posts
You may want to check out the following related posts:
- All You Need to Know about Web Design Project Preparation
- All You Need to Know about Web Design Project Planning and Process
via woobzine.com
101 invaluable questions to build your Web Design Client Questionnaire
28 October 2009 | Category: Clients | 4 comments |
The Web Design Questionnaire is probably the most important element of the Web Design Project Planning. But, creating a questionnaire can be dreadful even for the most experienced freelancers.
With these 101 invaluable questions, you’ll be able to build an awesome questionnaire template and adapt it to the client in order to gather all the information you need to create outstanding websites.
Introduction
Questionnaire design is often highly time-consuming and therefore overlooked. That’s why I decided to write this article… Well, and that was a good opportunity to improve my own questionnaire template too.
Please note that these 101 questions are not a ready-to-use sample questionnaire yet. In fact, the client won’t probably be willing to answer more than 20 or 30 questions at first. But, all of them will come in handy sooner or later (for example in further email conversations).
At the end of this article, you will find links to many interesting questionnaires examples. They will make questionnaire design even easier for you!
COMPANY-RELATED QUESTIONS
Contact Information
1. Company legal name:
2. Address:
3. City:
4. State:
5. Zip:
6. Telephone:
7. Fax:
8. URL (example: www.woobzine.com):
9. Who is our contact person from your company?
10. First Name:
11. Last Name:
12. E-mail:
13. Telephone:
14. Cell Phone:
15. What is the best way to contact you?
16. When? What’s your time zone?
17. Who has the final approval on the project?
18. Please provide relevant contact information:
Company General Information
19. What’s the purpose of your company?
20. What are the long term goals of your company?
21. Please describe your company in a few sentences (age, size, growth, etc.):
22. Please describe your services and/or products in a few sentences:
23. Please describe your corporate culture (or company philosophy) in a few sentences:
24. Who are your main competitors?
25. How are you different from your competitors?
26. Why do you believe people should do business with you rather than with your competitors?
PROJECT-RELATED QUESTIONS
Overview & Strategy
27. Site name? Domain name (example: www.woobzine.com)?
28. Do you want a new website or a redesign?
29. Please describe the primary purpose of the site:
30. How should your site stand out from those of your competitors?
31. Please list the reasons why you want a website. If more than one item applies, number in order of importance:
- Establish and or improve a web presence
- Improve brand and / or logo recognition
- Describe your products and services
- Provide customer support and / or after-sales service
- Increase market share and visibility of your company
- Generate sales transactions (e-commerce website)
- Build, develop and centralize information (surveys, investigations, etc.)
- Support existing advertising campaign or marketing strategy
- Confirm the technical leadership of your company
- Raise funds (donations, charity)
32. Are there any other goals you intend to accomplish with this website?
33. What action do you want to inspire to people who visit your website?
- The purchase of a product or services
- A visit to your premises
- To contact you by mean of telephone / fax / email / post
- To request more detailed information
- To send information regarding themselves
- To comment on your products or services
- To become a member of the site
- To search for information
- Other – please describe:
34. How do you envision that the site meets these goals?
How will the website help your company to reach their long-term goals?
Brand & Target Audience
35. Please describe your potential customers and / or users that you want to attract to your site (age, gender, industry, online frequency, income level, purchasing habits, computer skills, etc.):
36. Why / how is your site necessary for your target audience?
37. Where do your customers usually obtain information? (Radio, word of mouth, newspapers, etc.)
38. What does the target audience feel and think about your company?
39. What is the overall message you are trying to convey to your target audience? (For example: cost-effective, secure, reliable, efficient, etc.)
Identity & Design
40. Do you have a slogan or a tagline that clearly describes what you offer in terms of benefits or features? (Example: Think small. Just do it. Have it your way. Broadcast Yourself.)
41. What feeling or message do you want your site to convey to those who view it?
42. Have you researched your online competition so you have an idea of what you do and don’t want on your site? If so, please provide some examples:
43. Do you have a logo? If so, please provide digital copies and/or visual examples of your logo. If not, do you want to have one created?
44. What do you want to use for the header (company name, website name, logo, etc.)?
45. Please name three sites you like. Why do you like them?
46. Please name three sites that you do not like. Why don’t you like them?
47. Please describe your website’s desired look and feel by using adjectives and short phrases (illustrated, professional, colorful, dark, etc.):
48. Do you have any existing brand colors?
49. Do you have a color scheme that you would like to use?
50. Do you have any colors that you want to avoid?
51. Are there any printed or digital documents (text, advertisements, images, photos, etc.) which the site should match, or from which it can draw inspiration? (If yes, please attach to this questionnaire.)
52. Please describe and attach to this questionnaire, any visual elements or styles you would like us to use (including elements from existing marketing materials / sites / existing files):
53. Do we need to take photos of you, your staff, your premises, or your products?
Marketing
54. If you were using a search engine like Google, what words or phrases would you use to find your site? (Please write no more than 10 keywords, and order by importance.)
55. Would you like your site to be submitted manually to the major search engines?
56. Other than what search engines will produce, do you have an existing plan or marketing strategy to promote your website? (Examples: Adding URL to all business materials, newspaper and magazine ads, internet banner advertising, links exchange, adding site to Internet award programs, etc.)
57. Would you like us to take over all or part of the marketing strategy to promote your site? (Adwords campaign, social marketing, PageRank, etc.)
58. Would you like any additional design services to be packaged with your new website? (Business cards, envelops, letterheads, etc.)
59. How to you plan to entice your visitors to return on the website?
Content
60. What is the approximate number of pages you’ll have in your website?
61. Make a list of pages to include in your website (example: home, presentation, services, articles, contact, FAQ, links, sitemap, resources.).
62. If you wish, you can also make a quick draft of the site structure:
63. Please select the items and / or features that will be part of your site:
- JavaScript (jQuery)
- Searchable database + form
- Flash
- Chat / Conference Room
- Streaming audio
- Newsletter / E-mail list sign-up
- Streaming video
- Customer Survey / Polls
- Illustration
- Product Reviews
- Testimonials
- Landing / call-to-action pages
- Map
- Information/request forms
- Registration / Customer Log-in
- Image Gallery
- Prize drawings
- E-Commerce solution
- Forum
- Online Payment
- Calendar of Events
- Blog
- RSS Feed
- Portfolio
- Uploads
- E-zine
- Downloads
- Custom Database
64. Please describe any other feature you’d like to see incorporated into your site.
65. You can also ask questions about the features described above:
66. What do you not want on your site, in terms of content, text, etc.?
67. How many new pages will you publish each month on your site?
68. Where is the new website content (text, pictures, etc.) coming from?
69. Who’s responsible for updating it?
70. Is it ready for use on your website?
Hosting
71. Do you already have a domain name (example: www.woobzine.com)?
72. If not, what domain name do you want for your site?
73. Do you already have subscribed to a hosting company?
74. If not, would you like us to take care of your website hosting? (We provide regular security back-ups, maintenance and special support for the websites we host)
Updates
75. How often do you foresee needing to update your website (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc.)?
76. What kind of updates do you foresee (design/layout changes, graphics changes, content changes, price changes, other changes)?
77. Would you like us to update your site or would you like to be responsible for updates?
78. Would you like to be able to easily update your own content without any special software or programming knowledge?
79. If so, do you want us to use any specific CMS or web enabled administration system (Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, etc.)?
Maintenance & Optimization
80. Is there a webmaster in your team or someone who will be responsible for maintaining your site?
81. If so, can you give us links or examples so that we can evaluate their skills?
82. What information and statistics do you want to know about your visitors? (Views, country, previous site visited, etc.)?
83. Who will analyze the statistics and optimize the site based on results?
84. How will you measure the success of the website?
85. Would you like the usability of your site to be tested and evaluated by a dedicated team (5 persons test to simulate 85% of visitors’ behavior)?
86. Would you like us to provide training to your staff in order to meet your future needs?
Website redesign
87. What does your target audience feel and think about the current website?
88. What areas of the current site are successful and why?
89. What are the needed areas of improvement from the current website?
90. How do you expect the new website to improve your business?
Logo Design
91. Do you need a new logo or a logo redesign?
92. Do you have any specific imagery in mind for your logo?
93. If you have a tag line, would you like it stated alongside your logo?
94. What adjectives should best describe your logo?
95. How do you prefer your logo to be worded or written out? (Example: woobzineisgreat or woobzine is great)
96. How would you like the typography to appear? (Example: script, bold, light, hand drawn, custom lettering)
97. What logos appeal to you and why? (Please provide links and/or visual examples)
WORK-RELATED QUESTIONS
Work philosophy
98. Where did you hear about us?
99. What are your reasons for choosing us for this project?
100. What is most important to you: price, quality or speed?
101. So that we offer you an appropriate estimate, please choose one of the following:
- Expensive = Excellent + Fast
- Slow = Excellent + Cheap
- Inferior = Fast + Cheap
102. What are the determining factors of failure or success for the project?
Budget & Time
103. What is your budget for this project?
104. What is your monthly budget for maintaining the site?
105. What is your monthly budget for marketing the site?
106. For each project we do, we allege funds for the development of sites for charities and / or humanitarians. Would you like to be involved?
107. We require a 25% to 50% deposit (depending on the scale of the project) to insure we get paid for the job. Conversely, if we are unable to follow out the work we have been set to do, we will refund you. Does that seem fair to you?
108. What’s your preferred deadline, time frame or exact date of completion?
109. How often do you want updates on the progress of the project?
Brief & Feedback
110. Please supply us with a brief description of the project.
111. Do you have additional comments? Questions? Feedback on the questionnaire? Or simply a few words to tell us?
Questionnaires examples and links
- A good questionnaire template for your logo design needs (my logo-related questions are almost all *cough* stolen *cough* from there.
- How to extract facts with a Web Design Client Questionnaire (this one is damn good too… I just love FreelanceSwitch)
- Another good sample questionnaire
- Creating a questionnaire: essential questions
- A long sample questionnaire (I love the budget answer: “over 100 000$”)
- Many questionnaires examples
- Short but effective questionnaire design
- Sample questionnaire with freedom for the client
And don’t forget my own article on the Web Design Project Preparation. It features many interesting quotations about the client questionnaire design.
What now?
Again, you can’t ask your clients all these 101 questions… it’s too much and the client would probably run away. My advice is to build your questionnaire template with something like 20 questions. Then you should add those that match best your specific clients’ needs.
Another trick is to use two documents: one for the company-related questions and one for the questionnaire template itself. Even if the quantity of questions doesn’t change, many clients will find it easier to fill out two small questionnaires than a big one.
I hope you found this article useful! If at least one person buy me a coffee to show their appreciation, I’ll give you all a sample questionnaire based on my own Web Design Client Questionnaire.
Many thanks! And don’t forget to spread the word!
Related Posts
You may want to check out the following related posts:
- All You Need to Know about Web Design Project Preparation
- All You Need to Know about Web Design Project Planning and Process
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