A client brief is essential for every web designing project. Providing an adequate and explanatory web design brief will promote transparency between the web developer firm and the client. Discussing the strategy before starting a project can help the designers get an estimate of what client’s expectations are. Once your client brief is approved, you get a framework to begin. Most importantly, it saves your time and indicates your level of planning. Client brief can also be considered as a reference document for all future requirements.
You can consider starting your client brief with a concise synopsis of your organization’s key achievements and strengths. You can also add how associating with you can help the client’s purpose best. Let your key benefits be highlighted so that the clients can see your USPs pretty early. You can consider drafting your client-brief based on the following concepts:
- Goals
Asking the clients to specify their needs is very important in a creative task like web design. Whether it is remodeling an old site or beginning from the scratch, the objective should be clearly understood. Also, it is a good practice to discuss with them about what features they would like to add to their website. You can eliminate the irrelevant ideas and keep the essential solid ideas to begin the work.
- Know the Audience well
What type of people are going to visit the website? Is the website strictly-business driven? Know as much as you can about the target audience. Every audience group has distinct preferences and ignoring their behavioral patterns, you cannot develop a quality-rich website. You can categorize your audience on the basis of age, gender, occupation, location, income, etc. This will help the designing team to understand the audience diversity in clearer terms. In case your clients do not help you with sufficient information, you can consider creating the website that will appeal to people in a given demographical region. Find the locations where your client’s business operates, or delivers its products/services, and then do some research to understand the general traits of the population living there. You can consider discussing with your client about their customers. Getting a rough idea of an ideal customer for that particular business is another way of understanding the target audience.
- Discuss Finance Early
While many clients and business firms do not consider this as the best practice, discussing the budget at an early stage is a very pragmatic and effective method of defining your task. Having an idea about the project budget, web developers will know how to customize the website to provide the most optimal solution to the clients. Tell your clients how this will help their purpose. Of course, a few clients will be hesitant to disclose their budget to you. But you can highlight your best services so that they can see how they are going to receive value for money
- Prepare an impressive Design Brief
You must document your key ideas and present to your client for approval. It will not just complement your proposal letter, it will, on many levels, support and justify your capability. Ideally your design brief should contain everything that you intend to implement during the web development process. You can also highlight some of the important concepts (designs, plan layouts etc.) for a more effective project presentation.
- Deadline! Know it before it’s too late
Web designing is a creative work. While some of the clients acknowledge that web designing requires ample amount of time, a few of them may not have a clear idea about it. You can put forth some estimate regarding when you can deliver the overall. Make a realistic and actionable plan to meet the ends well ahead of the quoted time. If there is a difference of opinion regarding schedule between you and your client, you can offer them alternative solutions, as and when required.