Websites are either the most exciting or most daunting part of an organization’s marketing strategy. Most of the time, it’s both. Our client’s love-hate relationship with websites is warranted. Websites are vulnerable; they’re sometimes hundreds of pages long, and they include a web of information strategically placed to support audiences and employees alike — but that web can be quite confusing and frankly, overwhelming.
AOR understands the flurry of questions that come with starting the website process. From the questions that need to be answered to understand how we’ll build the site, to the questions our clients ask because they’re new to the process. For us, it’s exciting. We get to solve puzzles every day and help bring all the scrambled thoughts you have about your organization into one, organized, streamlined place — your website.
Your website is a direct reflection of who you are. It’s one of the most vulnerable outward-facing pieces of marketing and branding for any organization. That’s why we put so much time and care into our website work. Usually, that means starting with a lot of research. And we really mean a lottttt. We’ll work with you in our discovery phase to ask important questions, guide you through the answers, and find out as much information as possible about what you need from a website before we even get started.
It’s our job to make sure we have the answers to the correct questions; however, as you enter our discovery phase, it can be helpful to come prepared. Below are a few standard questions you may want to discuss with your team prior to meeting with an agency partner like AOR.
A future-ready website begins with clarity around where your organization is heading. Whether you’re planning new community programs, internal modernization, audience-experience improvements, or long-term economic initiatives, understanding your goals helps us build a site designed for adaptability and growth. Concrete or aspirational, every piece of context helps us ensure the site becomes a strategic asset.
During Discovery, we’ll collaborate to define specific, measurable objectives for your new site, whether it’s improving self-service for audiences, elevating transparency, increasing sales, or strengthening economic development outreach. Bringing initial ideas to the session helps us hit the ground running and align our strategic and creative decisions with your success metrics.
Budget informs platform decisions, content approach, integrations, and functionality. Websites vary widely in cost, so having a range helps us guide you toward the most effective solution and ensures we build something that’s truly right for your organization.
Your current digital presence offers valuable clues. Analytics, user feedback, outdated content, and tools that no longer serve you all help us understand where improvements can make the greatest impact. Even anecdotal observations are meaningful when designing a better experience. We love any historical data we can get. It’s part of the research we do to ensure we’re moving forward in the right direction. (Great clues to the final puzzle.)
We’ll dig deeply into your audiences during Discovery, but any information you can provide early gives us a head start. Whether you have fully developed personas or just intuitive knowledge, it helps us begin researching behavior and tailoring the experience around real people. In discovery, we’ll be keeping your target audience at the center of our discussions. Every decision we make has to benefit them in the end, so knowing who they are coming into the meeting will make things go a lot more smoothly.
Before the session, we audit competitor and peer websites to understand what’s working, what’s not, and where you can stand out. This helps us uncover opportunities, anticipate user expectations, and build a site that clearly expresses your strengths. It helps if you also keep tabs on your competitors and come ready to either rip them apart (in friendly competition, of course) or tell us what you love about how they approach your industry strategically.
Your differentiators shape the story your site needs to tell. We want to highlight what sets you apart and translate that into messaging, visuals, and user experience that feel undeniably “you.” We’ll really dig into these as we go through your competitor analysis, but coming to discovery with an idea of what makes you different is a great way to get a head start on our discussions. Is your culture more welcoming and inclusive than your neighbor’s? Do you approach your construction process differently than the other guys? Are your services niche and specific? Think about these questions as you begin your partnership with us.
Like your budget, the timeline helps us shape our approach. If you need something fast, we can phase the work to get a strong landing experience out quickly. If you have a longer runway, we can build a deeper, more complex system. Clear timing keeps everyone aligned.
Your preferences — design, features, structure, tone — give us insight into your taste and expectations. Reviewing inspirational examples together helps us shape the direction and design a site that feels aligned with your brand. It’s our goal to make this website a direct reflection of you, and that doesn’t just mean through words. We want you to love your website and be proud of it.
Understanding where people struggle — confusing navigation, outdated tools, inefficient workflows — helps us prioritize improvements that have an immediate, meaningful impact.
CRMs, payment platforms, member portals, marketing automation tools, and inventory systems, oh my! Integrations shape both user experience and backend architecture. Knowing these upfront helps us plan effectively and ensure users’ experience on your site is seamless and easy.
Friendly? Confident? Welcomed? Inspired? Safe? Clear on next steps? Tone and visuals, content and micro-interactions — all these things deeply impact user experience on your site. Since they are the center of our considerations, it’s important to know how you want them to feel when they are interacting with your site.
Sometimes our scope doesn’t include content writing, and clients opt to move all existing content over to the new site. It’s important to think about this strategically before entering into conversations with our team. Does your current content reflect who you are and what you offer in the most appropriate way? Is it outdated? Does it match your current messaging? Content is a huge undertaking when it comes to the website process. It’s important to consider how you’d like us to approach it when looking at a new website.
Great websites don’t begin with design — they begin with clarity, conversation, and curiosity. By asking thoughtful questions upfront, we’re able to understand your goals, your audiences, your challenges, and the opportunities ahead.
This discovery-driven approach allows us to build digital experiences that are strategic, intuitive, and uniquely aligned with who you are. Good questions and quality answers give us the pieces we need to solve the puzzle that is you. And who you are translates directly into your website.
At AOR, we believe the best work happens when we collaborate closely, listen deeply, and design with people at the center. These questions are the starting point for a process that transforms insight into impact and sets the foundation for a website that grows with you.
Give us a holler if you’re interested in getting this process started!