Website Design Process #1: Briefing

This article is part of a series of posts I have planned to offer advice on the processes to follow when designing a website. I seem to be continually refining the design process I follow in order to keep things as efficient as possible, but I’m currently in a state where I feel perfectly comfortable with it.

So anyway, the first part of the process I follow… the briefing! This part of the can vary depending on who you are designing the website for. Is it for a design agency? A freelancer? Or are you designing for one of ‘your own’ clients?

Getting the a good project brief will benefit you immensely when it comes to designing the website. You need to know what sort of information the customer wants to present online, what sort of look and feel the website needs, whether or not social media or dynamic content is to be included and many other elements. You might think that you can sort some of this at the build stage, but you can’t, at least not very efficiently anyway. Get it sorted before you design the website and the whole process will flow a lot smoother. Do it now! NOW! NOW NOW!!

Working For a Web Agency or Freelancer

If you are designing for a customer of a web agency or freelancer, then the briefing phase will have most likely been done for you already. Unless your client is taking advantage of you, then you should be provided with a fairly detailed brief that outlines what their customer requires as they will probably have met up with them for a discussion.

This brief should consist of what (and how many) pages are needed, who the customer’s target audience is, examples of their competitors websites and whether or not a CMS or blog is needed, hopefully amongst many other pieces of information which we’ll cover shortly.

One of the most important pieces of information that should be covered here is what websites the customer likes the look or features of. These websites don’t necessarily have to be their competitors, but they should give a similar impression or feeling as that which they want their new website to get across.

Working For One of Your Own Clients

Some of you may spend most of your time working with your own clients (i.e general businesses that need websites) and will therefore be required to manage the whole project from start to finish. Maybe you’re outsourcing some of the work, but it’s really down to you to find out what your customer requires from a website.

This is where an in-depth discussion will be necessary to gather all of the dirty details. I prefer to meet up with my prospective customers provided that they are based fairly locally. If they live too far away for a meeting to be cost-effective, then a phone or email conversation will suffice.

When I first started taking on my own projects, I had this part of the design process all wrong. I would turn up to meetings most of the time without any note taking equipment and just have an informal chat with the customer. We would talk about the points I mentioned above, however I would then have to remember them all. If your memory is anything like mine then trust me… take a notepad! And a pen of course.

I then started taking a pad and paper with me to my meetings, but I rarely used it. I would simply jot a few vague notes down, sometimes I wouldn’t write anything down at all! Taking a notepad simply made me look that little bit more prepared.

After reading several blog articles discussing the importance of a briefing form, I knew it was time to rethink my briefing process. I studied several blogs to get ideas about what questions to ask, I also noticed that the conversations I was having with my prospective customers were following similar patterns, so I threw in some of the questions in this briefing questionnaire myself.

Being the generous guy I am, I thought I’d share my briefing questionnaire with you. I didn’t want to make it too long as I didn’t want my meetings to feel like interrogations, also I thought that the guides in the blog posts I read had so many questions that a lot of them seemed unnecessary and basically cancelled each other out. If you do find that you’re at a meeting and need to note anything down that doesn’t fit within these questions, simply write it somewhere else on the sheet! Easy.

I’ll be sure to update this post if / when I amend my briefing questionnaire, so feel free to check back in future! Please post any feedback or contributions in the comments section, they’re much appreciated

Briefing Questionnaire

1. Do you have a company logo or any other marketing material?
2. Do you have a slogan or tagline that clearly identifies your benefits or features?
3. Do you have a deadline for this project?
4. What sort of budget are you working on for this project?
5. When will the content be available? Do you have photos?
6. Is there a particular colour(s) you are keen on?
7. Approx how many pages will be required? And what will they consist of?
8. Do you plan to have any dynamic content on your website? e.g. Blog, CMS
9. How editable do you need the content to be? Different solutions, will affect cost
10. Do you require website / email hosting?
11. Do you wish to make use of any social media to promote your business online? E.g. Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Digg
12. Describe potential customers / target audience (e.g. income, interests, gender, age, computer / internet connection)
13. List several other websites that you like, not necessarily competitors
14. Are there any elements of your competitors’ websites that you are particularly keen on? Whether it be design or content
15. If you were using a search engine, what words or phrases would you use to find your site? Which of these words or phrases is most important?