What to prepare for our first Website Meeting

10 Aug What to prepare for our first Website Meeting

We’ve been to our fair share of website planning meetings, and it’s safe to say at least 95% of people aren’t prepared for how much work it is for THEM.  Of course, we want to make everything run smoothly for you, on time and on budget – we want you to be thrilled with your new site!  But we need your insight and your help to keep things focused and moving.

Here are some things to know or keep in mind before we sit down.  Giving it a little thought before we sit down will go a LONG way towards getting you the website your business really needs – on time and on budget!

• First, and most importantly, what do you want your site to be for you?  What is/are your goal(s)? Is it an e-commerce site, a portfolio of your work, or a lead-generation tool?  Or, all of the above?  Will you need photo galleries (say, before and after photos), do you need custom forms designed, electronic contracts with e-signature, do you require e-commerce and merchant services to sell products or take deposits for your services?
• Who are going to be the point-people for the project?  Sometimes larger companies have additional staff who can provide content or imagery for us, let’s meet them at this meeting.
• What do you want your website to say about you?  Decide on the look and feel of your site.  We will go through a few mockup ideas, depending on the size of your project, this will either be using live demos of templates we know work great, or, for the larger project, fully designed mockups working with our graphic design team.
• You must prepare content for your site – that means WORDS and IMAGERY. We are not responsible for the words that are going into your website.  We can make recommendations as to what it should say, but you are responsible for all of the content unless our project actually includes that specifically in the contract.  Imagery as well.  You must provide hi-res logos, and all  imagery needed for the website.  If you do not have these things, we can quote for these additional services.  Stock Art may be needed, so you need to budget $10-15 per image.  Bring any content you have on a USB drive to our meeting.
• We encourage everyone to OWN THEIR STUFF.  We do not like to host for you, we want you to own and control your digital assets.  We’ve seen alot of companies taken advantage of because they really don’t get the whole interwebs thing.  We want you to be in control.   As such, once we pull the trigger, you must be prepared to purchase your domain name and web hosting package so we can get started.  We can set these up together, or I can do it ahead of time if you provide your credit card information.  You are responsible for keeping your hosting and domain name accounts current. Budget approximately $20o-ish for domain name and hosting for 2 years.
• Bring the login information for all of your social media, paypal or other items we are integrating into the site.
• During this first meeting, we will set alot of groundwork and go back and prepare a scope of work and pricing for you.  Once approved, work commences upon receipt of 50% deposit.  For smaller/faster projects, 100% of our fees is required to commence.

We hope things gives you a few things to think about and have ready for our meeting.

We can’t wait to get started!