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My customer want a website checklist

Ask the client

Note: this is just a mental map, you should ask questions to your client but it should feel like a conversation. Let the client talk, and mentally tick off categories as they cover them naturally.

Goals & Vision

• What is the main goal of the website?
  • common website includes: digital presence (sito “vetrina”), selling services (i.e. seeing inventory, managing orders), brand authority (blog with articles)
• What problem does this website solve for your customers?
  • The website must
• Establish KPI (revenue, traffic, conversions) that you can reference layer
• Do you have an existing website? what do you dislike about it?
• Who are your main competitors and which of their sites do you admire?
• Is there a specific website that represents the vibe you want?

Target Audience Who the website is for determines everything from tone to UX patterns.

• Who is your ideal customer? Age, location, income, lifestyle?
• Are your customers tech-savvy or less comfortable online?
• Where do your customers currently discover you (social, Google, word of mouth)?recommended
• Will the site serve B2C, B2B, or both?
• What languages does your audience speak?

Products & catalog

• Is there a catalog, are there any services that you want to sell through the website?
• Are products physical, digital or a mix?
• How often does your catalog change?
• Do you sell subscriptions or recurring products?
• WIll you have product bundles or upsells?
• Do you need a product configurator? (customer engravings, sizes, prints)?

Payment & checkout

• Which payment methods do you want? (PayPal, Apple Pay, bank transfer, cash on delivery, buy-now-pay-later?)
• Do you need to handle VAT/GST automatically per country?
• WIll there be coupoun or discount logic?
• Do you need to support installment payments? like Klarma or Scalapay.

Shipping & Logistics

• Do you ship?
• Which countries will you ship to?
• Do you need to manage stock and get low-stock alerts?
• How do you handle returns and refunds?

Technical integrations

• Do you already have a domain name?
• Do you have a hosting provider?
• Which e-commerce platform are you open to?
• Will you run Google Ads or Meta Ads (i.e. if clients click from facebook)
  • Ad tracking requires content management and proper setup
• Do you want a custom admin dashboard?

Content & SEO

• Who will write the content? you or us?
• Will you have a blog or content marketing section?
• Do you have brand assets? (logo, fonts, color palette, photo library)
• Do you need professional product photography or video?
  • Photo/video production is often a separate budget line — confirm responsibility.
• (If the client already has a website) do you have an existing ranking to protect?
• Will you need the multi-language content translation?
  • Translated content needs a workflow - human translator, DeepL API or hybrid

Visual identity

• Do you have any existing brand guide? (logo files, colors, typography, tone of voice?
• Do you have existing brand photography or illustrations, or will new visual assets be needed?
  • Custom photography/illustration is either a separate budget line for you, or a dependency you need from the client. Nail this down early.
• What is the single most important action you want a visitor to take on the site?

Project & Budget - Align expectations on timelines, ownership, and money.

• What is your budget range?
• Are you willing to pay recurring costs like domain name, platform bills, cloud bills?
• Do you want ongoing maintenance/support or a one-time delivery?

For yourself (as freelancer) or your team

Platform choice

• Does the client need a hosted SaaS platform (Shopify, Squarespace), or a self-hosted solution?
• What is the expected monthly traffic and peak load?
• Do you have to take care of maintenance of the project?
• Will the client ever want to migrate or make another project with more feature?
  • Note: if the client want more complex things, you make another project not just upgrade the previos one, this is expecially true if requirements change a lot.
• Do the client need a headless/composable architecture (i.e. Next.js + Shopify/Contentful) or a monolithic platform (i.e. static website) is fine?

Hosting & Infra:

• Where should data be geographically located (typically UE)
• What uptime SLA does the client expect?
• is a CDN Needed for global asset delivery?
• Does the client want managed hosting (Kinsta, WP Engine) or raw cloud (AWS, GCP)?
• What is the disaster recovery/backup strategy?
• Will the site need autoscaling for unpredictable traffic spikes?

Website structure, layout, Navigation

• How many pages will the sites be?
• How complex is the site structure? How many main sections, and how deep does the navigation go?
• Should the homepage be a full marketing page or more of a ‘dashboard’ style portal for returning users?
• How should the mobile navigation work? (hamburger, bottom tab bar, full-screen overlay?)
• Should the site have a sticky header, sticky cart icon, or floating CTA button?
• What font will be used?
• What will be the visual hierarchy?
• Any animations or transations? (Commons are: scroll reveals, hover effects, page transitions, loading states)
• How to make the website mobile first?
• Do you need to make a mockup with Figma?
• Test if the website meet accessibility standard WCAG 2.1 AA

Peformance & SEO

• What core Web vitals targets does the client expect? (LCP, CLS, INP)
• Will images be mostly user-uploaded or controlled by you? Who handles optimization?
• Does the site need server-site rendering (SSR), static site generation (SSG) or is client-side acceptable?
• Will there be a caching layer? (Varnish, Redis, full-page cache)
• Is structured data / schema.org markup required? (product schema, breadcrumbs, reviews)

Security

• If there are any accounts, how will they be protected? How are passwords stored?
• How to manage updates and vulnerabilities in software?
• Who is responsible for SSL certificate management and renewals?
• How will dependency and plugin updates be managed?
• Will the site need a Web Application Firewall (WAF)?

Search & discovery

• Is there a catalog? (filter by brand, price, size color)
• What is the expected behavior - basic keyword match, AI/semantic search?
• Does the client want product recommendations or ‘related products’ powered by AI?
• How should out-of-stock products be handled in search and category pages?

Analytics & tracking

• Which analytics platform will be used?
• Does the client want a custom dashboard or is the platform default reporting enough?
• What conversion events need to be tracked? (add to cart, checkout start, purchase, refun)
• Will A/B testing be needed? (landing pages, checkout flaws, product descriptions)
• Who manages tag management? Is Google Tag Manager required?

API & Architecture

• Are there any legacy systems that need to sync in real time vs batch?
• Will the site expose its own API for a mobile app or third-party integration?
• If a backend is present, how will front-end communicates with it?
• What is the webhook / event strategy for integrations?
  • Define the key events and what systems they trigger
• If external APIs are used they may break without warning, what is the strategy to keep track of it?

Deployment & workflow

• If coding it and not using templates, how will code be versioned & deployed?
• Who approves and triggers production deployments?
• How will database migrations be handled without downtime?
• Is there a rollback plan if a deployment breaks the live site?

Legal & Compliance

• How to make cookie consent banner (GDPR)
• Do you need a terms & conditions, privacy policy, return policy pages?
• are you selling age-restricted products ?