What to Expect from a Website Kickoff Meeting

Meet the team.

Thus far, you’ve likely been talking with only one or two of the agency team members. At the kickoff meeting, you’ll get to meet more of the team who will be actually working on this project. This serves as a time to build some rapport with the team you’ll be collaborating with to accomplish your project and business goals. You’ll be working closely together over the duration of the project (and after), and this goes a whole lot smoother when you understand how each other works and have established trust.

Discuss project requirements.

A kickoff meeting is also an excellent time to set expectations and make sure everyone is aligned on the project goals and requirements. Up until this point, conversations about the project have likely been at a relatively high level. This is the time to discuss some of the more nitty-gritty details about the aesthetic and technical aspects of the project so your agency partner can gain a deeper understanding of your vision for the new website.

Depending on the project, the technical requirements might necessitate specific tools or third party software to accomplish them. There are sometimes costs associated with those tools/systems. The kickoff meeting is a great time to discuss these tools and who is responsible for selecting and paying for them.

Some common use cases of third party website integrations are:

• A job board (automatically displays job listings as they are posted on your Applicant Tracking System)
• Geotargeting functionality (different users see different website content based on their IP address)
• AI (content personalization, customer support, etc.)

Establish next steps.

A full website redesign or development project can seem daunting and you may not know where to start. You may be looking at your long list of website requirements and goals and think, “Where do we even begin?” Do not fret! Rely on your agency partner’s expertise to map out the project stages for you, including milestones, to ensure that you are all working off of the same roadmap.

The kickoff meeting is also the time to establish how to effectively communicate and collaborate with your agency partner. Whether that is agreeing to status updates via email, phone, or in-person meetings, defining these details early paves the way for a positive working relationship where all parties know what to expect (and when!).  (If you need tips for improving communication during projects, we have you covered!)

Come with questions.

Your agency will have questions for you, but this meeting also serves as a time for you to get your questions answered. The more questions answered now the less opportunity there is for miscommunication or misalignment down the road. This Q&A time can also serve to identify and flag any potential hurdles that will need to be addressed.

If you’re unsure of what questions to ask, below are some ideas to get you started.

• “What does your website design & development process look like?”
• “Who will I be communicating with and how often?”
• “Who is responsible for providing website content?”
• “How and when do you like to receive website feedback?”

These types of questions help set expectations of how the project will go and what is needed from you to complete the project so you can plan accordingly.

Come with website examples.

A major part of a new website is the design. Your agency will need to gain an understanding of your desired look and feel of the new website. They’ll want to know what you like and almost equally as importantly– what you don’t like.

Do a little research, and come with a handful of examples of sites you like and don’t like. These examples don’t necessarily need to be from your own industry either. Talking through design features and styles that you like and don’t like will help establish an aesthetic starting point for the design team.

If you have absolutely no clue, that’s okay too. Your agency partner does this all the time (for a living!) and can help make recommendations and show you some examples to get your opinion.

Think through your site map.

A site map is a list of all the important pages on your website, and how they will be organized. Since you already have a signed agreement at this stage in the process, your agency team will already have an idea of what pages you need on the site. However, they will need to know how those pages are all to be organized in the site navigation.

You might already have an idea of how to organize the pages. That’s great! If not, lean on your agency’s expertise and create a site map together. Thinking this through before the kickoff meeting will help you get the most out of your meeting time.

Put together your homepage content.

For almost all website projects, the homepage design is the first and arguably the most important design to nail down, since it drives the rest of the website design. Having homepage content to share with the design team helps them mock up the best possible design to fit your needs.

Lack of content is one of the most common culprits for stalled projects. Writing and compiling website content is no small task so the earlier you can start on this, the better. Keep in mind that your website content does not need to be absolutely set in stone. That’s the beauty of a flexible content management system, you can update the content with ease. Worry less about perfection and more about getting your general messages represented on the page. You can always go back and adjust the content before the website launches.

And if copywriting isn’t your forte, utilize your agency partner for that! This will increase the scope of the project, but will allow you to focus on the other tasks you are responsible for and help keep the project moving along.

Gather design assets.

This is also the time to provide any other brand-specific requirements/details with your agency partner. The design team will need to know if your business has a brand style guide or a color palette, as these will inform their designs. Don’t worry if you don’t have either of those. They can make recommendations and establish those guidelines with the new website design. Your designers will also need high quality vector logo files to use for the new website design, so be sure to locate those before the kickoff meeting.