As a designer, each of your clients and projects is unique. There are some things you need to know or know well about all of your clients in order to create the best design for them. Building an effective website that solves specific business needs requires designers to accurately understand many business details.
In this article, we’ll look at 9 things designers and clients need to discuss before a design begins to increase the likelihood of success. These are topics centered around understanding the client's business and needs, rather than contractual issues like payments and deadlines.
1. Business purpose
Almost all businesses have mission and vision statements. If you want to design a website that truly reflects your business and is effective for your customers, understanding the basic reasons why a business exists and its goals is absolutely necessary.
If you don’t know your customer’s core responsibilities or why they exist, be sure to clarify these issues from the beginning. Although it is very simple information, without them, the project is likely to go astray.
2. Business of specific products and services
Once you've figured out why your business exists, it's important to understand the specifics and how your customers get revenue from the business. Whether you are building an e-commerce website, a general information station, or any other type of website, it is necessary to know what the client is prepared to offer the website users.
3. Customer’s user statistics
Discussing your business's products and services will allow you to gain more information about the users who pay for your products and services. An effective website is user-centered. This is crucial for you as a designer, your clients. You need to know exactly who will be using the site and who is likely to be interested in the business being offered.
It's a good idea to get as much information on this as possible. For example, the age, gender, occupation, income, etc. of the target users are very helpful in determining the design style of the website. In addition, establishing a website to collect more information about the reasons why users are interested in products and services will help increase potential.
4. Corporate culture
A good website reflects the business, making it an effective part of the overall marketing and corporate image. In order to create a website that accurately represents your business, you need to understand their corporate culture to a certain extent. Many times you can learn about their culture through the business people (if possible). Talk to different employees, talk to different customers or users (if possible), and look at their existing marketing materials, such as brochures, business cards, and advertisements.
5. What needs to be improved on the current website?
If your project requires a redesign of an existing website, an important thing you need to know at this time is why they chose to redesign, and specifically what did they plan to redesign to improve the current situation? Is it because their website is only several years old? Does it need to change its appearance? Or is it because the business has undergone major changes that require new design and information? Or are the new products and services provided not part of the old website? Or is the current website unable to provide effective help for new businesses? While this is a very logical thing to consider, asking for information from the client and clarifying why they embarked on a redesign is something many people don’t think you need to fully understand.
6. What they expect from the new website
If there are specific areas where the current website is failing or out of date. Be sure to have a deep understanding of what customers expect from a new website to improve their business. Expectations are a huge factor in how satisfied they will be with your job. So in order to satisfy users, it is very important to know what the final result of the project will be.
7. Decisive factors for project success or failure
A new design for your website will give your business a satisfying feel improvement. But ultimately there will be other influencing factors that will determine the success or failure of the project. As a designer, effective work will result in a website design that improves the client's business. It is very important to have a clear understanding of the factors that determine the success or failure of a project. Maybe success is simply increasing sales. Perhaps the website reflects the major events of the company more accurately. Either way, knowing how to measure can help you focus on the right areas.
8. Why they choose you as a designer
With so many freelance designers and design firms to choose from, it’s obvious that clients choose you for a reason. There are also things related to making the client feel that you are the best candidate. This may be due to specific projects in your previous work. Maybe because of the effective communication and attention to detail you demonstrated before signing the contract. Maybe it's because of your pricing.
Whatever the case, there's something about you or your work that encourages your clients to get to know other designers with you. The reasons behind this decision will often help you better understand what they want or expect from you.
9. Their plan for maintaining the website
Currently, almost every website is designed and developed using some type of CMS. Their need to constantly maintain and update the website affects the choice of CMS and how to build the website.
Do they plan to add new pages and frequently change images and text on existing pages? Do they need a variety of templates to create specific pages for different purposes? Do they only update pages occasionally or rarely? Understand that customers are constantly Going forward your requirements can help you decide on the right CMS to use for a specific project. In some cases, customers may already have a CMS they want to use, but this is not the case often.