The First Conversation I Have With Every New Client
Most web developers start with a questionnaire. How many pages? Do you need a contact form? What's your color scheme?
I start somewhere else entirely.
Before I touch a wireframe or write a line of code, I have a conversation. It takes about thirty minutes. And almost every time, the client walks away saying some version of the same thing: "Nobody's ever asked me that before."
Here's what I ask — and why.
What's the goal of the site?
Not "what pages do you need." The goal.
Is it to get phone calls? Fill out a contact form? Sell a product? Build credibility before a sales meeting? Drive foot traffic to a physical location?
The answer shapes everything — the layout, the copy, the calls-to-action, what goes above the fold. A site built to generate leads looks completely different from a site built to establish authority. If I don't know which one I'm building, I'm guessing.
Most clients haven't been asked this before. They've been given a list of pages and told to pick. That's not a strategy — that's a menu.
Who's actually going to land on this thing?
Not "your target market." I mean specifically: where are they coming from, and what are they trying to figure out when they get there?
A 55-year-old contractor who heard about you from a friend is a different visitor than a 30-year-old marketing manager who found you on Google. They read differently. They trust differently. They need different things before they're willing to pick up the phone.
Understanding your real visitors — not a demographic profile, but actual humans with actual questions — determines the language, the structure, and the amount of explanation your site needs to do.
What do you want them to do?
Every good website has one primary action it's trying to get a visitor to take. One.
Not five. Not a phone number, a contact form, a newsletter signup, a social follow, and an appointment scheduler all competing for attention. One clear next step.
This is where a lot of small business websites fall apart. They put everything on the homepage and trust the visitor to figure out what matters. Visitors don't do that. They leave.
I ask this question because the answer tells me where to put the energy — and what to cut.
What's broken right now?
If you already have a website (most clients do), I want to know what's frustrating about it. Not technically — just personally.
Do you cringe when you send someone to it? Does it not come up in search? Does it look nothing like your business actually is? Did someone else build it and you've never been able to update it since?
The answer to this question is usually the most important thing I hear in the whole conversation. Because the pain point is almost always the thing that, if we fix it, makes everything else click.
How will you know it worked?
This one catches people off guard. Most clients have never thought about it.
But I ask it anyway, because "I want a better website" isn't a success metric. More calls is. Lower bounce rate is. Ranking on page one for a specific search term is. Getting that one big contract is.
When we agree on what success looks like before I start building, we have a shared definition to build toward — and something to measure against six months after launch.
Who owns it after I'm done?
This is a practical question, but it matters more than people realize.
Who's going to add new services? Update the team page when someone joins? Write a blog post? If the answer is "nobody," the site architecture should be as static and low-maintenance as possible. If the answer is "our marketing coordinator, twice a month," I need to build something they can actually use.
A beautiful site that nobody can update is a liability. I'd rather build something slightly simpler that stays accurate and current.
Why I ask all of this before I build anything
These questions aren't gatekeeping. I'm not trying to make the process longer or harder.
I ask them because I've seen what happens when they get skipped. You end up with a technically competent website that doesn't actually move the needle — because nobody stopped to ask what needle we were trying to move.
The developers who skip this conversation aren't bad at code. They're just not thinking about your business. They're thinking about deliverables.
I'd rather spend thirty minutes understanding your business than three months building the wrong thing.
Want to have this conversation?
If you're thinking about a new website — or wondering if your current one is doing what it should — reach out. The first call is free. No pitch, no proposal until I understand what you actually need.