Design Brief Tips & Tricks

When we onboard a new customer we are making a lasting first impression of our level of customer service as well as our expertise on websites and marketing strategies. Projecting confidence while ensuring the customer feels heard makes all the difference when building this new relationship.

Since we have 30-45 days to onboard a new customer and launch their website we need to ensure we are best utilizing everyone’s time and getting all the answers we need the first time. Below I’ve outlined some tips and best practices to ensure you start onboarding off on the right foot and are able to deliver a mockup/website that is reflective of the customer’s brand, destination, and includes elements the customer notated as most important that will be successful with our future marketing efforts.

Pre-Kickoff/Website Design Call:

• CSM: When creating Onboarding Checklist conduct pre-research on hotel and geographic area.
  • Is there a name for the geographic area?
  • What are the feeder markets/target market?
  • What are the major draw to the area?
    • Based on pre-research, fill out as much of Customer Demographics and Target Market section on the Onboarding Checklist as you can.
• CSM & CS: When creating the Website Design Questionnaire conduct pre-research of customer’s current website and other hotel websites in area.
  • What are the customer hot buttons on current website?
  • What topics do they focus on?
  • What new styles could we recreate?
    • Based on pre-research, pick and update specific Q4Launch website examples to share with the customer on the Website Design Questionnaire.
      • These should fit their brand and where you envision their new website.
    • Fill out the main navigation either based on current site or with suggestions you have for their new site.
    • Fill out suggested touts (what are their highest revenue generating sources?)

Questions/Next Steps that must get answered on Onboarding Call/Website Design Call:

• CSM: What are your highest revenue generating sources?
• CSM: What other revenue streams do you have? (Restaurant, Spa, Catering)
• CSM: Can you accommodate onsite weddings, meetings, corporate events?
• CSM: What is your seasonality and booking windows?
• CSM: What are your customer demographics? Are there any untapped markets you’d like to pursue?
• CSM: Do you have any rooms/packages not listed on your current website?
• CSM: Do you have analytics access?
  • Timeline in which General Logins sheet must be filled out.
• CSM: Schedule SEO call 1week from initial call.
• CSM/CC: Schedule Branding within 3days of initial call.
• CS: Will you be using your current logo or a new one?
  • If new, do you need us to design?
  • If no, what is color scheme/shape of new logo?
• CS: What color scheme do you want on the website?
  • Note: Color Scheme should tie into the overall brand / personality of both the property and the destination (e.g. a dark blue and white color scheme works great for a northeastern coastal customer, but doesn’t feel right for a Savannah one, which would be typically include more pastels.
• CS: Does customer want to keep current font scheme?
  • If no, do they have a specific font they want to use?
  • Do they want their headers to be simpler (easy to read) or more elegant?
  • Do they like a serif style font or a san serif style font?
• CS: Decide on touts and focus section (including hover effects).
• CS: What functionality would you like to see on your website?
• CS: What are your concerns with a new website?
• CS: Do you have a login to current website?
• CS: Discuss the 48hr turnaround time to stay on track for 30day launch and that content migration will start in 7days so at that time no edits should be made to current website.

Immediately After Website Design Call:

• CSM/CS to sit down and discuss the Website Design Brief.
  • What item(s) are most important to customer to feature?
  • What design ideas will you be pulling from other Q4Launch sites?
• If possible fill out the Design Brief together.

Website Design Brief:

Example Design Brief: The Blackburn Inn

• Be sure to include general/branding notes from the customer.
  • Did they use any specific words to describe their brand?
    • What words did they use to describe the onsite experience?
    • Who are their typical guests/reason for staying? (e.g. an older demographic would point to a larger, simpler font so it is easy to read)
• Be sure to include links and screenshots for designer.
• Be sure to include exact titles and text for focus sections to ensure it fits in design.