I’d like to thank you for this list. It’s a great resource for any level of designer. It covers many great points.

I’m sorry that you have to keep explaining to folks that it is not meant to be read verbatim to the client. Par for the course, I guess.

Awesome job!

#1) Why do you think you need a website?
Expect a few awkward moments of silence here. Hopefully their answer will NOT be “because everyone else is doing it”… and ideally it will be a lead into #2 (variation on your #67).

#2) When people visit your site what do you want THEM to do?
Join a mailing list? Buy your product? Schedule an appointment?

Having done design work before the days of the www (yeah, I’m that old) I’d argue that #2 applies to all marketing/advertising material (online or off). It’s at the heart of copywriting and ultimately it’s THE most important question of all.

Keep up the good work!

ps: (+) do you need multilingual support? how much language do you need?

such a simple thing but explained like a hell

Awesome work and a great addition to freelancers knowledge and template bank (and for free). Maybe more people could appreciate ( as I do) all the time and energy you invested on the project!

From my side thanks for your insight.

J. | Webilder.com
Often there are no right answers, there’s just different choices!

Thanks for popping by and sharing. You list some excellent questions and strategies as well.

While I appreciate the effort I’m honestly not sure about this list; a lot of the questions (e.g. “Describe the style you’re looking for” or “Do you need a CMS”) rely on the customer making design decisions. Of course, it depends on what kinds of clients you’re working for, but if they have their own marketing department that can answer all the questions up there, they will usually be briefing you in the way they are most comfortable with.

Smaller clients on the other hand may be overwhelmed by the amount of questions and their possible implications. Especially if you’re dealing with the business owner; it almost never helps to put them in a position where they don’t really know an answer to your question, but are too proud to ask for an explanation. They might get uncomfortable working with you personally or just answer the first thing that pops into their head which may not be what they actually want.

Personally, I prefer not asking too many questions but rather listening to what the client has to say about his business in his own words. Usually, many of the 72 questions up there become apparent in that process. My #1 question: “How do you earn money?”; #2 “Why should people come to you instead of the competition?”; #3 “Where do you plan to take the company, and what kind of challenges are you facing on the way there?”

Clients in my experience are a lot more comfortable talking in their own language about terms they understand, and it’s my job to translate that into a web design.

More often than not, these questions lead to interesting discussions and insights for the customer, especially because I’m dealing with a lot of start-ups.

I’m really sorry I don’t have more positive things to say, it’s just that my approach is so very different (and I don’t have much in the way of a proven track record, FYI). I really depends very much on who you’re working with and how I guess. Also, #71 is missing a word. Again, Sorry.

This PDF Chart is an excellent resource for freelance designers out there. I have crossed paths with many designers who lack a proper structure in their requirements gathering and whatnot.

Thanks for your contribution to the community

narek @ prgmatic

You won’t end up looking smarter on this article by posting random comments, not having read the intro material and previous comments by me and others who took the time to read thoroughly:

“I want to help you figure out what questions to ask, and not simply tell you questions I would ask.”

“I hope you don’t torture your poor new client with 72 questions!! This is meant to jog YOUR brain and not your CLIENTS brain.”

“…this list is in NO WAY intended to present to the client. It’s meant for YOU when you are on the phone, or maybe even composing an email offline. It’s a “what am I forgetting” list meant to jog YOUR brain, not scare the bejeebees out of your client.”

“Think of this as more for you than the client”

“This is intended for you, not the client. Once you get that perspective it makes more sense.”

And so on.

Oh, that is a GREAT one! I should bump a question out and put the languages one in!

Does your website need support for multiple languages.

That is:
Does your website need to support multiple languages?

Keep writing, cheers!

Very useful list of questions you should ask your every new client….

For the rest; great list, very useful!

@ Andy: If you go back and re-read the intro material (perhaps it’s a bit too much!), you would see that this list is in NO WAY intended to present to the client. It’s meant for YOU when you are on the phone, or maybe even composing an email offline. It’s a “what am I forgetting” list meant to jog YOUR brain, not scare the bejeebees out of your client.

@ Mark: sounds like you got something out of it! Excellent!

@ Nuno: You got it right that the list is mixed up. That’s exactly what it’s supposed to be. Those 3 questions (among others) are not the same question at all. Again, this is meant to stimulate YOUR brain. For instance, you see the client has an ugly logo – might be time to ask for a redesign since you are redoing the site and the logo is hopeless. Another client says “Yes, I have the copy done, the photographs taken, and the logo from my other designer”, to which you might ask “what format is it in?” I’ve gotten logos from “designers” in Word. Oh, I should have asked.

@ Vladimir: 99% of all my clients are terrified by things like forms. I don’t know why this is, but for many reasons, they expect designers to be able to read minds, and they don’t want to think any more than they have to. I have found a free form, bite-sized approach works best. This list of 72 questions is a list of questions you might ask 5 or 6 of in a given conversation, only to go back later and ask a few more later. It depends. Clients can be so random. “One more headache for me…” – that is so true! Yes, clients want to give us their headaches, but they have to do some work or the headache won’t go away. The clients I work with won’t fill out forms. So the best I can do is ask questions, and hope to cover as many show stoppers up front, and then come back in subsequent conversations to fill in the blank. But, getting the show stoppers out of the way FIRST is what I aim for. This list of 72 questions is simply meant to stimulate that right-brain thinking to ask those questions and to ready your mind for that first call with a new client.

And I said already, in 90% of the time is like, “Pfff can my administrator do that”, “Can my office Mng answer them”, “Can you co me tommorow, i have a lot of work now,i need to have clear mind do decide what i want”…etc…and doing it for more than 10 years I can grantee, they didn’t know most of the times what they want because they expect from you some ind of impression work which’s gonna knock’them down, or simple they can decide. Also when it is about wealthier clients, it’s always about competition. So for the end, just to give you advice 100 of my 102 clients you would loose only by chasing them to answer you damn questions, and you know and they assume you do that to make it better, to understand them, to get to know your client, but again it’s some strange fisics, they just don’t want to get bothered like that. mt advice – brae those 70 question is like 6 parts, and after every part do some work, even print that a little bit of work (also I learned and noone can say different, they want to feel their work, to touch it, trust me), so after each question show some wor done and little by little you’ll get the most out of your client. Like this o answer you so much, ha, they didn’t do that much not even for their BA diploma in school. Good luck with those questions – they are realy goo questions, I’m not saying that but too muvch. I hope someone will agree with me?

Thanks anyway

I appreciate your comment about Capital Good Fund. It was a blast working with Andy Posner on that!

We have a survey piece that gets into further detail, but I love the idea of having something close at hand that at least does some prequalifying. All of those questions are leading questions – and being able to avoid the linearity of the “logically” grouped questions makes sure you can be more conversational.

I am getting better at being okay with the sock drawer not being ordered.

This knocked mine off.

Really liked your capitalgoodfund.org design, by the way, which drove me here.

That said, I have a questionnaire that I use in the SECOND step, where I’m actually collecting real data for a real job or at least real website RFP or SOW.

I found a few typos in the list and the PDF, but didn’t see the big huge blatant sub-heading change. I just fixed it so I won’t confuse any more passers-by. Thanks for the tip-off. How embarrassing, really.

The intention of doing the questions is 100% good, actually is a must do, but my 2 cents are:

1. Categorized the questions, so they know what are you looking for, maybe they want to answer first the categories they know better and stay at the end with the more technical categories.
2. Reduce the number of questions, you can do combos or include more stuff in just one question.
3. Make this questionnaire online with Yes and No options and some text boxes.

P.S.
You have a mistake in the title before the questions list:
“The list of 68 Top Questions to Ask New Web Design Clients”

It’s 72 not 68 right?

Thanks for sharing this good work!