You do not need to arrive with a sitemap, a design brief and five pages of polished copy. A web designer needs an honest description of the business, the customers you want to reach, real examples of your work and a clear next step for the visitor.

Rough notes are fine. At WebAddress, we send 12 questions before the first conversation, then use a half-hour interview to follow the useful threads. We write and design from there. We think a recorded voice call capturing lots of details and stories – vs. terse notes – is a great way to gather this information.

These are the questions and why each one matters.

1. What is your business called, and what do you do?

Explain the business as you would to a neighbour. The plain version is usually more useful than the version prepared for a brochure.

We need the exact trading name for the footer, but the important part is the description. What do you make, fix, supply or help with? A stranger should be able to understand it without knowing the industry.

If the name has a story that says something useful about the business, tell us. If it does not, that is fine. We do not need to manufacture one.

2. Where are you based, and where do you want work?

List the towns, suburbs or regions you cover, then identify the places where you most want enquiries.

The answer affects the wording, contact details and search plan. “Waikato” may be technically correct while being too broad to help a customer in Cambridge decide whether you will come to their property.

Tell us about travel limits, service zones or work you only take in certain areas. A website should filter as well as attract.

3. Who is in the business, and how long have you done the work?

Tell us whether customers deal with you, a family team or a larger crew, and which people should appear on the site.

Relevant experience may have started before the current business name. If you spent 15 years in the trade and opened your own company last year, those are two different facts. Both can be useful when stated accurately.

Names, roles and a real team photograph often do more for trust than a paragraph claiming the business is trustworthy.

4. Which services do you offer, and which ones do you want more of?

Give us the complete service list, then mark the work you most want the website to bring in.

This is one of the most important distinctions in the interview. A business may be capable of 20 kinds of work while wanting more of four. If every service receives equal weight, the important ones disappear into the list.

Also tell us about work you do not take. Clear exclusions save the owner and the customer a phone call that was never going anywhere.

5. Who is your best customer?

Describe the person or organisation that is a good fit: homeowner, landlord, builder, facilities manager, another business, or a more specific group.

We are interested in the situation as well as the label. What has happened just before they contact you? What are they trying to get done? What would make the job a good one for both sides?

Good user-centred design starts with evidence about the people using the service and the task they need to complete. The GOV.UK Service Manual recommends writing needs in words users recognise and basing them on research rather than assumptions. For a small business website, the owner’s repeated customer conversations are a useful place to start.

6. How do customers find you now?

Tell us whether the useful work comes from referrals, Google, social media, a sign-written vehicle, another trade or somewhere else.

This helps us understand what the website must add. A business with steady referrals may need a place that confirms its reputation and shows recent work. A new business with no search presence has a different job to do.

If you already have analytics or Search Console data, share it. We would rather use the queries real people entered than guess what they might search for.

7. What would a customer type into Google to find you?

Write the phrase you would use, then add the phrases customers actually use if they are different.

These may combine a service and a place, but the best answer often includes the problem: emergency repair, difficult access, a particular material, a booking need or a kind of customer. We can research the current search results later. Your wording gives that research a useful starting point.

The website should still be written for the person behind the search. Google describes useful search optimisation as something applied to people-first content, not a reason to produce pages for phrases that have little to do with the business.

8. Which other businesses do you rate or compete with?

Names are enough. We look at competitors to understand the choices customers already see, the services they expect to find and the gaps that a clearer website could answer.

This is research, not a copying exercise. A competitor may have a useful page structure and completely unsuitable language. Your website still needs your facts, your priorities and your voice.

Tell us what you admire and what bothers you. “Their work is excellent, but I can never find a phone number” is more useful than “I don’t like the blue.”

9. What do you already have?

List the domain, website, business email, Google Business Profile, social accounts, logo, uniforms and vehicle signage that already exist.

We need to know what should stay, what should change and who has access. Please do not send passwords in the questionnaire. We will arrange a safe handover or temporary access when it is needed.

Real-world brand material is useful. The colour on the ute that customers already recognise may be a better starting point than a fashionable palette from a design gallery.

10. What proof can the website use?

Send links to reviews, relevant qualifications, awards, guarantees and examples of recognisable work that you are allowed to name.

Proof should be exact. “Fully qualified” is too vague if the qualification has a name. “Fast response” should not become “within one hour” unless the business can make and keep that promise.

If you do not have testimonials ready, tell us which customers might be happy to provide one. Asking them while the project is moving is easier than leaving an empty panel in the design and hoping a quotation appears at the end.

11. What photographs are available?

Tell us how many useful photographs you have, what they show and whether you can take more.

Original files are best. A photograph downloaded from Facebook has usually been compressed and may be too small for a large website image. We also look for useful coverage: the owner or team, work in progress, finished results, equipment, vehicles and details a customer would care about.

Real photographs provide evidence and texture. A stock photograph of an immaculate person holding a suspiciously clean drill rarely helps a local customer recognise the business they are about to call.

12. What should the visitor do next?

Choose the main action: call, text, request a quote, send photographs of the job, book a time or visit the shop.

Then tell us what is realistic. If you are up a tree all day, the site should not promise a reply within an hour. It can say when people normally hear back and collect enough information to make that reply useful.

This answer determines the main button, the form fields and the information placed beside them. A website can have several contact methods, but one should be the obvious next step.

What questions will we ask in the interview?

The interview goes deeper where your first answers contain something useful or unclear.

We may ask:

• Tell us about a job you are proud of. What made it difficult or satisfying?
• What do customers worry about before they hire someone in your trade?
• What questions do you answer every week?
• When you win a job over another business, what reason does the customer give?
• What do customers compliment that you take for granted?
• What should the website never say or look like?
• What may change in the next year that the site should leave room for?

We record the conversation with your permission. The transcript helps us preserve the phrases you use naturally rather than translating everything into agency language.

What if you do not know every answer?

“I don’t know yet” is a useful answer. It tells us where a decision or a piece of evidence is still needed.

We keep three kinds of gaps visible during the project:

• a fact to verify, such as the exact year or service boundary;
• an idea to confirm, such as whether to offer a particular guarantee;
• an asset still to collect, such as a team photograph or review.

The gap follows the work until it is resolved. AI does not get permission to smooth it over. This is one reason we approve the positioning and content before building the site.

What should you gather before the first call?

If the material is handy, bring:

• your logo in the best format you have;
• original photographs of the work, team, vehicle or premises;
• links to reviews and your Google Business Profile;
• the domain name and the name of the company managing it;
• the exact phone number, email address and service area for the site;
• examples of websites you like or dislike, with the reason.

Do not delay the conversation because one item is missing. We can make an asset list and help work through it.

Your answers become a positioning brief, then the website content, then the design. The full website design process from interview to launch shows how those stages connect. If you are curious about the tools, read how we compare an AI website builder, a web designer and an AI-assisted agency.

Or book the half-hour WebAddress chat and tell us what you do. We will take it from there.