We’ve put together the most useful and actionable website design questionnaire template possible.
What is a website design questionnaire?
A website design questionnaire is a set of questions designed to gather information before starting a new website project.
Questionnaires help your team and the client understand the goals, preferences, and expectations for a new website.
A website design questionnaire, like this one, will cover important questions like:
- What’s the main purpose of the website (e.g., lead generation, eCommerce sales, investor prospectus)?
- Who is the target audience, and what pain points are you solving?
- What functionalities and features do you need (e.g., contact forms, calculators, checkout, email capture, etc.)?
- And lots more, as we cover in more detail below!
Why use a website design questionnaire?
You don't want to show a client web design mockups only for them to say, “No, this is all wrong, we need…” followed by a long list of changes.
It saves time, money, and headaches to ensure everyone is on the same page before designing mockups.
Questionnaires give clients a chance to dump all of their ideas into one document.
Framing these around questions structures their ideas, so your team can turn them into design mockups and, finally, a fully-functioning website.
A website design questionnaire:
- Makes it easier to structure the development process
- Ensures client requirements are captured before project sign-off, avoiding scope issues
- Establishes clear expectations and starts the communication process between the client and design team
What questions should you ask when designing a website for a client?
The aim behind the questions is to reduce back-and-forth from the start.
It should eliminate the need for clarifying questions mid-project and get the basics on paper before any work begins (e.g., target audience, website purpose).
It also reduces the risk of any surprises, such as a client saying halfway through, “Oh, and we’ll also need a blog.”
Let’s dive into the questions you should include!
8 Website design questions for better client onboarding
Here are the 8 most important website design questions at the start of a client project.
1. What is the purpose of your website?
This is the first and most important way of scoping out a website project.
Why is this an important question?
Understanding a client’s goals is step one to building a solid website.
Different websites have different goals, impacting design, user experience (UX), and functionality decisions.
For example, an eCommerce site focuses on UX/UI, generating conversions, and search functionality.
The aims and objectives also impact the size of a website. A simple service-based B2B website might need a few pages, whereas an eCommerce store will need hundreds or thousands of product pages.
How to answer this question?
A clear and concise statement.
The primary objective needs to be clear—what outcome are they aiming for (e.g., brand visibility, lead generation)?
‍Example answer:
‍“Our goal is to improve our current eCommerce site, re-platform it, overhaul the UX/UI, and search functionality to increase sales and reduce basket abandonment.”
‍Pro tip: Follow up on this answer if you need more information.
Being vague at this stage could cause expensive and time-consuming mistakes later on.
2. Do you want to overhaul an existing website or create a website from scratch?
Before any project starts, you need to know the basic scope: start from scratch or overhaul an existing website.
Why is this an important question?
This is crucial. It’s about the scope of the project.
It helps provide a price and prepare the resources needed.
This way, you can be clear on preferences and issues if the aim is to overhaul an existing website.
Find out what the client likes about their current website and what they dislike or want to change.
How to answer this question?
Knowing what a client wants and why is valuable information.
You need to know things like:
- What are the shortcomings of the current site?
- What don’t you like about it?
- Why isn’t it doing what you originally wanted it to?
Understanding the answers helps design and development teams avoid past mistakes and ensure the client gets what they want.
Example answer:
“We need to revamp our e-commerce site search function, as it returns irrelevant results at the moment.”
3. Who is your target audience/who are your ideal customers?
Next, you need a clear idea of the target audience and customer profiles.
Why is this an important question?
A client’s audience and their target customers will influence the look, feel, UX/UI, web copy, SEO, and images on a site.
A high-impact website that generates ROI for a client should solve problems for users.
It should show that the client understands their customer's pain points and can provide a solution.
How to answer this question?
Ideally, the client should have extensive customer research available for the design team.
We know that’s not always the case. But aim to get as much from them as possible so you can understand their audience/customers.
You need information such as demographics (e.g., age, gender, location), interests, and online behaviors.
If in B2B, you also need to know about job roles, their market, the types of businesses they work with, and as much ideal customer profile (ICP) information as possible.
Example answer:
“We want to attract young professionals, 25-35, with high disposable income, interested in fitness and wellness products across the US, Canada, and the UK.
Please see attached our ICP and market research data.”
If all they’ve got is a few lines, then you might need to dig deeper and ask for more information.
4. What is your budget?
Before pricing a project and assigning team members, you’ve got to be clear on the client having a budget.
Why is this an important question?
You’ve got to determine feasibility early-on.
Clients with low budgets but wanting 50-page websites with lots of functionality need to know what’s possible and what isn’t.
Align on the budget, expectations, goals, and payment terms before a project starts.
The last thing you want is to deliver a website a client feels is “half done” and have them dispute the final invoice.
How to answer this question?
Websites are an investment. Clients need a realistic idea of their budget before committing to a website project.
Agencies can charge from $3000 for something simple up to $50k or more for larger websites with advanced functionalities.
Pro tip: Lots of clients either don’t know what to spend on websites. Or they only invested a small amount for their first site, so they expect it should be cheap.
There are many drag-and-drop website builders, cheaper providers, and freelancers who can create a template site for a low price.
Your competition includes cheaper providers and misperceptions over pricing, value, and the impact a high-quality website can make for a business.
eCommerce brands are more willing to invest. Whereas smaller, traditional mom-and-pop shops are either more hesitant or have lower budgets.
One way around this is to present clients with a range of packages. That way, you can see how your packaged options fit with client budgets.
5. What is the desired timeline for the completion of the website?
Timescale and budgets are two questions that go hand-in-hand.
Why is this an important question?
Both sides need to set realistic expectations of when the project will be finished.
A client wanting a 20-page, custom design site with new web copy, branding, SEO, and images in 3 weeks isn't realistic, or should expect to pay a premium fee.
Setting a timescale makes it easier to manage a project, set milestones, and use this information to impact the project management roadmap.
A realistic timeline means you can agree on payment terms based on those milestones.
And expectations from the client side, so they’re clear on when they need to provide assets and feedback throughout the project.
How to answer this question?
Clients don’t always know how to answer this question and likely will say something like “As fast as possible” or “We’d like to start this project by the end of XYZ”.
One of the reasons is that projects are complex and have multiple stages.
In most cases, feedback from clients is needed at these stages/milestones (e.g., design mockup feedback).
Pro tip: Make it easier for both parties by explaining the various stages of the process to the client:
- Design
- Development
- Testing (QA, UAT, etc.)
- Launch (including testing and implementing pre-launch fixes)
This will help manage their expectations of how long the project will take.
6. What specific functionality do you need on your website?
Functionality is equally essential as the answer to this impacts budgets and timescales.
Why is this an important question?
It’s important to know because you don’t want to be six weeks into a project when a client suddenly says, “Oh, and we’ll need a blog too!”
Knowing all of the functionality in advance means you can plan for this in the development stages.
If a blog is needed, then the website should be built on a basic content management system (CMS), like WordPress or Webflow.
How much functionality is required and how complex it is could increase the overall cost.
How to answer this question?
Provide a comprehensive list of the functionality the website needs.
These should align with the goals (e.g., if you’re going to sell products on your site, you’ll need a cart/checkout process linked with payment processors/platforms).
Pro tip: Make it easy for clients in the questionnaire by giving them a list of the most requested functionalities.
This way, the client can pick and choose.
Also, leave a field blank where they can input a request for anything more specialized/custom.
7. Does your company have branding guidelines/a style guide we can use?
A company's brand image and identity goes a long way towards helping designers with mockups. Not starting from scratch is huge!
Why is this an important question?
Websites act as digital showrooms or shops.
Businesses need to make a good impression on their target audience/customers.
Style guide and branding assets (e.g., logos, fonts, color palettes) ensure consistency between the website and the client’s brand identity.
This saves a lot of time for an agency if brand guidelines are already in-place.
Otherwise, this might be a service you need to offer a client in the early stages of a website design and development project.
How to answer this question?
The easiest way for a client to answer this is to provide any available assets, branding guidelines, and other materials to an agency.
However, it’s useful to add some context.
Make sure a client is clear on the design elements that need to be included in the website. A little background on how the brand/name came about is also useful, especially from a design perspective.
Pro tip: When a client doesn’t have branding guidelines, make it easy for them to explain how they want their website to look.
Give them a space to share websites they admire/want you to take inspiration from.
Also, give them a short “brand image” sub questionnaire that includes questions like:
- Do you want a more serious or fun website?
- Should it appear minimalistic or more complex?
- Professional vs. a more colorful design?
8. What are your primary competitors' websites?
Finally, you need to know who a client considers a competitor.
Why is this an important question?
Whether you’re implementing SEO or focusing on design and build, this gives you a deeper understanding of the target audience through competitive analysis.
Competitor analysis provides valuable insights to set design benchmarks and differentiate this website from the competition.
How to answer this question?
Ask for a list of competitors.
Do any extra research needed to find others, including examples of services that steal budget from companies in that sector even if they aren’t direct competitors.
Pro tip: The main goal with this question is to find out what aspects of the competitor’s websites your client likes or dislikes.
Use this to determine:
- Where can they improve?
- What specific functionalities are they lacking that you can develop for your client?
Get the client’s perspective, they know their customer and market best.
Even if there are larger, better-funded competitors, there are good reasons why they’ve got market share and customers.
Website Design Questionnaire Template
To make this easier for you, we’ve included all of the questions above (and several others) in our Free Downloadable Website Design Questionnaire Template.
Wrapping up…
We hope you’ve found this web design questionnaire template article helpful!
Start using Marker.io's template today to speed up the pricing and onboarding process of web design projects and gather all the information you need to design amazing websites for clients.
