This training will cover onboarding process for web design clients

By the end of this training, you will have a better understanding of what onboarding is, where it sits within the web design process, and how to create your own onboarding process to impress your clients

Defining Onboarding:
The process of adjusting new web design clients to your business. Is one of the most fundamental steps within the entire web design process.Includes the following elements:

• Process
• Concerns
• What to expect
• Goal: make client feel comfortable in your ability and be confident they made the right choice working with you

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• Typical web design process:
  • Outreach
  • Sales
  • Onboarding
  • Design
  • Development
  • Go live/offboarding
• A lot of designers focus too much on outreach/sales and design/development phases, but forget about onboarding
• A lot designers start out with a messy onboarding process, full of too many emails, stressful for everyone involved. Want to avoid this! And make you look good to your clients 🙂

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What good onboarding gives you:

• Commitment (agreement and payment)
• Adjusts new web design customers to your business
• Informs them about your process (so they are not confused about next steps)
• What to expect when they are working together (setting expectations from the start)
• Addresses any concerns they may have (common FAQs)
• How they should communicate with you (which channels and times)
• Gather/recap information (requirements and goals)
• Access customer brand assets (logos, images, text)
• Resources (free guides and tools)

Onboarding process

• Invoicing/getting paid
  • Strongly recommend taking some sort of payment, 25%, 50% deposit, or even all upfront
  • Use invoicing tool that includes a payment gateway
    • Bonsai, Stripe, PayPal
  • A client paying an invoice (in full or a deposit) is a financial commitment from them = they’re invested and serious)
• Contract agreements
  • You always need to have a service agreement, no matter who you’re working with
  • Recommend using a digital signature tool because it’s simpler
    • Bonsai, Dropbox Sign, Panda Sign
  • Outlines payment terms, deliverables, timeline, what happens if you want to cancel or if they want to cancel, etc.
• Questionnaire
  • Single source for collecting all client information and requirements
  • On average takes client about 15 minutes to complete
  • We can use a questionnaire style form to get everything you NEED
  • Make sure it is as few steps and questions as possible (DON’T overwhelm)
  • The aim is to collect client details, project goals, key stakeholders, their customers persona and website inspiration
• Accessing customer assets
  • This can be achieved in the “Questionnaire” steps using Google Forms, but sometimes clients will send separately
  • Collecting logos, branding documents, texts, images
  • Also gaining access to current website, Google Analytics and other things that we need
• Welcome email
  • Often the next point of communication after they agree to work with you
  • Don’t overcomplicate it
  • Again keep it as short as you can, but include all the important steps
  • The main aim here is quickly guide them through steps 1-4 so you can get what you need
  • Welcome them to your business, mention their goals for this project
  • Recently introduced custom Notion dashboard portal as welcome guide for customer
    • Welcome video
    • Recap of project info
    • Gathering customer information and brand assets
    • Process
    • Guides and setting expectations
    • Process and timelines
• Wrapping it up - things to note
  • Keep it simple!
  • Clearly explain what you need the client to do
  • Make sure you have the information you need to do a good job
  • Be mindful of the client’s time
  • Automate repetitive steps

Resources

Email template

Questionnaire

Notion client portal for you to duplicate