Additional Client Questions

What Questions to Ask?

This lesson provides guidance on additional questions for the client. You can ask these questions during the interview or through follow-up communication. Remember, you’ll want to be respectful of your client’s time and want to prioritize listening.

Asking additional questions is a good way to gain additional insight. However, make sure that your questions are either for clarifying provided information or are completely new. Remember, your time with the client is valuable and a crucial part of the discovery phase. The client profile and questionnaire has lots of information on it. Make sure you read through it and then come up with additional questions that contribute to understanding your client’s vision.

Activity: Brainstorming Additional Questions

This activity is a series of questions and prompts to help you determine what types of additional questions to ask. This isn’t intended to be a definitive source of questions. Instead, use this as a way to double check that you’ve done all the preparation you can for the client interview.

Pre-Interview Checklist

1. Make sure that your entire team has read the client profile/client questionnaire. This is a source of crucial information and the questions were pulled from several types of client research questions used by web design agencies.
2. Conduct additional research as needed. For example, if the client has specific brand guidelines for colors you’ll need to research palettes that integrate well with those colors.
3. As a team, determine if there are any responses in the client’s profile that you don’t understand. It’s better to ask for clarification up front.
4. Ask any additional questions, but be mindful of time. If you’ve had time conduct research and draw some wireframes based on the profile, you can ask for some quick feedback on what you’ve created.

Use the above steps as a touchstone for preparing for the interview. There are always special circumstances. If you focus on the client’s needs as your main priority you’ll be in a great place to start designing their site.