Five Questions to Answer Before You Build a Website

Many website projects run into trouble not because of design or code, but because key questions were never answered at the start. Whether you run a business, a school or an NGO, working through these five questions will help you brief your team or supplier clearly and get far more value from your investment.

1. What should the website achieve?

"We need a website" is a starting point, not a goal. Be specific about what success looks like:

• More enquiries or bookings?
• Fewer repetitive phone calls and emails?
• Greater credibility with partners, donors or customers?
• Online sales or payments?

Clear goals shape everything that follows — from the structure of the site to the calls to action on each page.

2. Who are your visitors, and what do they need?

List your main audiences and the questions they arrive with. A prospective customer, a job applicant and a potential partner all want different things.

For each audience, ask: what do they need to find, and what do we want them to do next? This becomes the backbone of your navigation and content.

Remember too that many visitors in Zambia browse on mobile phones, sometimes on slower or more expensive data connections. A fast, mobile-first site is not a nice-to-have — it is essential.

3. Who will write and maintain the content?

Content is the most common cause of delay in website projects. Decide early:

• Who will write, approve and update each section?
• Do you have good-quality photos of your work, team and premises?
• How often will content change — and does your team need to update it themselves?

If your team will make regular updates, a content management system that is easy to use should be part of the brief.

4. How will the website be looked after?

A website is not finished at launch. It needs:

• Security updates to keep software and plugins safe
• Backups so content can be restored if something goes wrong
• Monitoring to spot downtime or errors quickly
• Improvements as your organisation and audience evolve

Agree who is responsible for each of these, and include ongoing support in your budget from the start.

5. How will you measure success?

Return to your goals from question one and decide how you will track them. Analytics tools can show how many people visit, where they come from and what they do — but only if they are set up properly and respect your visitors' privacy.

Useful measures often include:

• Enquiry form submissions
• Clicks on phone numbers or WhatsApp links
• Visits to key pages
• How quickly pages load on mobile devices

Bringing it together

Write your answers down in a short brief — even one or two pages helps. It will make conversations with designers and developers far more productive, keep the project focused, and give you a clear way to judge whether the finished site does its job.

How Proserve Zambia can help

Our technology team can help you work through these questions in a discovery session, then design, build and support a website that fits your goals. Every project starts with understanding your organisation, not with a template.