The First Website Meeting: 7 Questions I Learned as an Intern

The first meeting of a website project isn't about design. It's about understanding the real problem the business is facing. I learned this the hard way at my first client meeting as an intern at Diyojen. Almost every question I had prepared was about colors and pages, yet the real value of the meeting was in the first twenty minutes, when we simply listened to the client. In this post, I walk through that meeting, the 7 questions our team asks in a first conversation, and what we clarify before putting together a proposal.

Before the meeting: The wrong questions in my notebook

At the first meeting I prepared for as an intern, most of my questions were about appearance, not the business. It was a Tuesday morning, and before the 10:30 call I had written down: "Which colors do you like?", "How many pages should it have?", "Which websites do you admire?" I felt pretty well prepared.

Half an hour before the meeting, someone from our client relations team glanced at my notebook, smiled, and said only this: "We'll ask those later. First, let's find out why they came to us." I didn't quite get it at the time. An hour later, three pages of my notebook were full, and we hadn't needed to ask a single one of the questions I had prepared.

Why do we listen first?

Listening first is the quickest way to catch the gap between what a client wants and what they actually need. That morning, the business owner across the table came in with a clear request: "We want a more modern, more stylish website."

Without touching on design at all, our team asked them to describe a typical day at the business. How do customers find you? What do they call to ask most often? What do you find yourself explaining over and over on the phone? As the conversation went on, the real problem surfaced: the existing site didn't look bad, but visitors couldn't find pricing and process information, so they were calling every day with the same questions. In other words, the issue wasn't "style" but "information nobody could find."

Catching that difference changed the entire project. A stylish new site that still hid the same information wasn't going to reduce the business's phone traffic. Our team wrote a single sentence in the meeting notes: "Visitors should find the answer they're looking for in fewer than three clicks." Every design decision that followed was tied back to that sentence.

The 7 questions we ask in the first meeting

The questions Diyojen asks in a first meeting are aimed at understanding the business, the visitor, and a measurable goal. Here is the list I put together from my notes that day:

1. What do you expect from your website? Phone calls, bookings, online sales, credibility? If the goal isn't clear, success can't be measured.
2. Who will visit your site? Local customers, international guests, corporate buyers? The answer determines how many languages you need and the tone of each page.
3. What question do your customers ask you most often? The answer to this usually becomes the most important page on the site.
4. What bothers you most about your current site? Complaints are a list of problems waiting to be solved.
5. Who will prepare the copy and photos? Content is where projects get delayed the most, so it needs to be discussed from the start.
6. Who makes the final decision? If the person who signs off isn't in the meeting, ideas that come in later can stretch the timeline.
7. Who will update the site once it goes live? The admin panel is shaped by this answer.

We do ask about colors and favorite websites, but at the end of the list. In a first meeting, those questions only make sense once you understand the business.

What we clarify before the proposal

Clarifying the things that affect scope before a proposal is written prevents surprises down the line. At the end of the first meeting, our team at Diyojen goes through the following items one by one:

The questions in this table show up concretely in Diyojen's work. For example, for HosDent, a multilingual website was developed alongside patient tracking and online appointment software; for Lotus VIP, vehicle tracking and appointment software was built next to a website that takes bookings. If needs like these hadn't been discussed in the first meeting, both the proposal and the project would have fallen short.

What I took away from that meeting

The most important lesson I learned as an intern was that a good meeting isn't about talking a lot but about asking the right question. When the meeting ended, the client said, "You didn't show us any designs, but for the first time I feel like someone understood our problem." I wrote that sentence at the top of my notebook, right next to the wrong questions I had prepared.

Now, before every meeting, I don't write colors in my notebook. I write: "What do your customers ask you most often?" If you're curious how a project moves from the first meeting all the way to launch, take a look at the page where we explain how we work.

In short

• The first meeting of a website project is about understanding the business's real needs, not about design.
• What a client wants ("a more stylish site") and what they need ("information people can find") are often different; listening first reveals that gap.
• In the first meeting, Diyojen asks 7 core questions covering the goal, the visitor, frequently asked questions, who owns the content, who makes decisions, and who handles updates.
• The number of languages, special requirements like appointments or bookings, and the timeline should be clarified before the proposal.
• Questions about colors and favorite websites matter, but they only make sense once the business is understood.