Some Basic Website Discovery Questions
Some of the questions that MUST be answered:
- Do you have a website now?
- If yes, Do you have analytics?
- If yes, what is the conversion rate?
- I f yes, what are the most viewed pages?
- How do you manage current work on the site
- New Content
- New Features
- Roll out plans
- Bug handling
- User Acceptance
- Do you have the content you will be using?
- If no, do you need a referral?
- Do you have the assets? Pictures, Videos, Documents so on
- If no, do you need a referral?
- What is the purpose of the site? This is more of a subjective question
- Blog, Ecom, Brand Dev so on
- What are your expectations with this website?
Seems a lot for a small site but keep in mind that the cost of a website is directly related to the work that YOU put upfront. Content is a cost. Assets are cost. Changes while developing is a big cost. These are the reasons why a simple website could go from average 30 hours of labor to 300 hours of labor. Expecting that someone not ask to get paid for the additional work is not realistic. On the plus side if the execution is right and stays in scope it can easily end at the estimated time and estimated budget.
Some Application Discovery Question
Some of the questions that MUST be answered:
- Is this a web or mobile centric?
- If mobile, does it need to be native?
- If you don’t know, What does it supposed to do?
- If mobile, does it need to be native?
- Do you have the content you will be using?
- If no, do you need a referral?
- Do you have the assets? Pictures, Videos, Documents so on
- If no, do you need a referral?
- Do you have a inicial storyboard?
- Do you have a business logic spec?
- High Level?
- Detailed?
- None?
- What is the expected launch?
- Is the MVP something that will work as base or will it be re-written?
- Are there plans to support in house?
- Is there a in house team?
- If no, Is there a expectation to build a in house?
- If yes, does it need to be local?
In this case of a more complex application, the questions will stretch into how the company itself is planning to scale. We know that things change and thinking too much into the future could be counter productive but it could lead into a conversation about the tech stack used for this venture. Once again the amount of work that is accomplished upfront helps save money during the development stage.
Well why can’t I have my [insert relative relationship here] build this and save a lot of money?
You can. I’m a [cousin - husband - son - nephew - dad - grandson - friend] of someone and if they asked me to build them a site I would. More importantly, I will give you the same value and professional effort I would give my friends and relatives.