The conversation that should have happened
Looking back, you can pin the blame in two places.
The client could have told us upfront. They didn’t.
But honestly, most of the responsibility was ours. We hadn’t asked the right questions. We took the brief at face value, focused in on the B2C work they’d described, and built a beautiful site that only served half the business.
I now say it pretty bluntly to the team: if a client doesn’t tell us something we needed to know, it’s because we didn’t ask. Asking the big questions is our job. Not theirs.
The system that came out of it
That mistake is the reason we now run what we call a Digital Roadmap Session at the start of every new project.
It’s a half-day. Sometimes a full day. We sit down with the client and we don’t move on until every big question is answered.
- Who are you actually selling to? Both halves of the business, if there are two halves.
- What does success look like? In 12 months, what would a brilliant outcome be?
- How does a typical customer find you today? Where do they drop off?
- What’s working in your marketing? What isn’t?
- What have other agencies got wrong?
- What does your competition do well? What do they get away with that you shouldn’t?
By the end of the session we have a plan. A genuine, week-by-week, twelve-month plan. Not a list of deliverables, a strategy.
Crucially, it means we’re not spending time and money building the wrong thing.
Why we don’t quote without it
Other agencies will quote off the back of a fifteen-minute phone call. They’ll send you a price for a website before they understand the business it’s selling.
We won’t.
Not because we’re being difficult. Because we’ve already learnt, the expensive way, what happens when you skip that step. The website looks great. The launch goes well. The client is delighted. And then you find out about the second audience nobody mentioned, and the whole thing has to be re-thought.
It’s cheaper for everyone if we do the thinking first.
The takeaway
If you’re an agency, the lesson is the same one we learned: the brief is never the whole story. Ask the questions other people don’t.
If you’re a client about to commission a website, the question to ask isn’t “how much” or “how long”. It’s “what are you going to ask me before you quote?”
If the answer is short, you’ve got your answer.
If you’d like to see what a Digital Roadmap Session actually looks like, get in touch or book a strategy call.