Looking for Good Design? Be prepared to answer tons of questions!
Business vS. Passion Project
I recently followed up with a potential client about their e-commerce needs by asking them questions about their business, see below.
If you don’t have answers to these questions, you are not running a business (yet!) - you’re running a passion project.
Hi Betty!
Thanks for reaching out. I'd love to chat more about this project and get a sense for how you'd measure the success of a new site. I see that you'd like to sell your products using an online store, and I can definitely help with creating an eye-catching site that funnels business your way. Here are some questions I have for you:
How much content do you currently have ready? I imagine you'll need 2-3 high quality product photos for each soap, written product descriptions, an ingredient list, a short bio/about text talking about you, your business mission statement, and some high quality headshot photos of you and anyone who works with you.
Have you ever sold anything online before? No wrong answer here - just trying to gage where to start. I specialize in e-commerce so I'm happy to help you get started from the ground up.
How many individual/unique products do you have in your collection/line? How often do you anticipate launching new product lines? Seasonally? Twice a year?
Will you be shipping internationally?
Where are you based? I'm based in Los Angeles, California, USA.
Who is your ideal customer/audience? Be as detailed as possible.
I noticed you opted for an open-ended timeline. If we work together, I would very much suggest that we set a firm launch date and stick to it - this allows you to budget accordingly and eventually make money as quickly as possible. This can be as far in the future as you need, but I would suggest setting it, and working backwards from there because sticking to a plan will galvanize and organize your efforts, and your customers will eventually see that translated into a cohesive brand story that will build culture and trust around your products.
I highly suggest we integrate a customer live-chat feature into your site because it leads to more sales. I have a couple options in mind and happy to chat more about these.
How robust is your supply chain, and how fast is your order fulfillment?
From start to finish, can you describe your ideal order fulfillment in a step-by-step sequence of events? Maybe it looks something like: order gets placed on the website -> product gets packaged -> shipping label is generated -> product is shipped -> product is delivered -> customer is prompted to leave a review. Basically, I want to understand your ideal process of fulfilling customer orders of your products in a practical, step by step sense so that I can think of as many ways as possible for your website to help you do everything.
If you haven't already, will you be hiring additional/regular staff to assist in running your business?
What are your sales goals for your first quarter/first year? Maybe this falls within a range of sales figures/revenue?
Will you be bundling products into "kits" or packages?
Related to the previous question, will you be offering customers subscriptions to your products? Many beauty and cleaning products are marketed in packaged or bundled subscriptions because it's a good way to generate predictable revenue.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, thanks Betty!
Best wishes,
Jonathan Morgan
Creative Director & Founder, DominantArts.Design
