TOOLKIT
What should you settle before starting a new website project?
A practical starting point before the brief, UX and design.
Before a brief for a new website is written, it is worth answering one question:
What exactly should change in the business thanks to this project?
“We need a new website” is a decision about a tool. It does not yet say what problem that tool is supposed to solve.
A company may want to enter a new market, reach a different type of client, organise an extensive offer, improve the quality of its leads or change the way it is perceived. Each of these goals leads to different decisions about content, information architecture, UX and design.
That is why, before starting a project, I want clarity on at least four questions:
1. What should change in the business?
→ Which goal should the new website support?
2. Who are we building it for, first and foremost?
→ Who should be the most important audience?
3. What do we want to show as most important?
→ Which part of the offer, competences or direction of development should take priority?
4. What decision do we want to lead the client to?
→ What should they understand, feel and do next?
This is not yet a brief for a designer.
These are business decisions that should exist before the brief is written.
UX can design the client's journey brilliantly. Design can give it form. Copy can tell its story. But first, the company has to know where exactly it wants to lead the client.
And that is where I would start a new website project.
I explore this topic in more depth in the DEEP DIVE:
What do we really design when we design a website? →
