Website Onboarding Questionnaire: Start Every Client Project Right

The first week after a client signs sets the tone for the whole project. A clear website onboarding questionnaire and checklist make you look organized, collect everything at once and stop the project from stalling on missing files.

The onboarding sequence

1. Day 0: welcome email with what happens next, the timeline and a link to the onboarding form.
2. Day 1–3: client fills in the onboarding form (below).
3. Day 3–4: kickoff call (30 minutes) to review answers and agree on dates.
4. Day 5: project plan sent by email with milestones and review dates.

Onboarding form questions

1. Main contact and approver (name, email, phone).
2. Preferred way to communicate and best hours.
3. How quickly can you review designs (in working days)?
4. Upload logo, brand colors, fonts and brand guide.
5. Upload text and photos, or choose “write it for us”.
6. Pages and features confirmed (prefilled from the proposal).
7. Domain and hosting: invite us as a user (no passwords in the form).
8. Google Business Profile and analytics access.
9. Social profile links.
10. Any dates to avoid (holidays, busy season)?
11. Anything that worries you about the project?

Communication rules to agree on

• One channel for decisions (email or project tool), not five.
• Feedback in one consolidated message per review round.
• How many review rounds are included.
• What counts as a change request and how it's priced.
• Your working hours and response time.

Kickoff call agenda (30 minutes)

1. Goals and success measure (2 min).
2. Walk through onboarding answers and gaps (10 min).
3. Design direction and references (8 min).
4. Timeline, review dates, approvals (5 min).
5. Questions and next step (5 min).

For the questions about goals and customers, reuse the web design questionnaire template. For the practical part, the client intake form covers files and access in detail.