/ Project Handbook

Kick-off Calls

The process for our kick-off calls can change project-to-project, but the goal should always be to conduct our “discovery” to understand the partner’s needs and how we can best support them. Sometimes, a TAM will hold an initial project discovery call with the partner before scheduling a “design kick-off” call with the design lead, while other times those calls may be combined.

Here’s a quick guide to how we conduct these calls, our goals for what we like to get out of them, and what happens after the calls. Keep in mind this process should be adapted to suit the specific needs of a project.

Before the discovery kick-off call: pre-game

Prior to the call, the TAM responsible for the project may have already had an initial project discovery kick-off call with our partner (we like to call them “partners”, and that’s what we’ll refer to them as for the remainder of this guide). If the TAM determines after that initial kick-off call that a project calls for design work, they’ll arrange a follow-up call (design kick-off), and that’s where the design leads come in. Before the kick-off call, the TAMs and design leads should do the following pre-game steps:

  • Review notes (if any) from the initial kick-off call and previous communications to get a sense of the partner, their site, and the problems we’re trying to solve for them.
  • Review any assets or questions that the partner might have sent in prior to the call.
  • Go through the list of standard discovery questions and pick out those questions that are most relevant for this call, based on what we already know (and don’t yet know).
    • If needed, prepare a competitive analysis of the partner’s current setup with WordPress. ███████████████
  • If there are specific questions or items we’d like to go over in particular with this partner, make sure to have those in mind. Because every project is different!
  • If we prepared any reviews or audits prior to this call, be ready to go over that with the partner.
  • If they have an existing site, gather as much details as publicly available to understand their tech stack, workflows, costs of current setup, vendors, etc.
    • If they’re on another platform, start thinking about comparable alternatives.
  • If this project involves a store migration, either from Woo or from another platform, start planning this now. Make sure you gather the details outlined in the Store Migrations to WooCommerce Considerations below, and loop in a developer to consult/help.
  • If the project involves working with internal Automattic teams, share the call agenda and plan a pre-game before the call with all internal folks to review the research, pitch (if we will be pitching), and agenda.
  • Time permitting: the TAM and design leads meet briefly to touch base on what will be discussed.

If this will be the first discovery call with a partner, most of the above steps still apply. It will just be up to the TAM and the design lead to coordinate who will be responsible for what before/during the kick-off call.

During the design call

TAMs initiate the calls by sending out a calendar invite with a video chat link to all parties involved. Once the partner joins the call, the meetings proceed in this general fashion:

  • The TAM kicks things off by stating the purpose of the call, and introduces the design leads (who may or may not elaborate on their roles).
  • The TAM and/or the design lead (depending on their previously discussed approach) will ask “Discovery Questions“. The exact questions you ask and the order you ask them will of course vary because each partner and project is different.
  • Design leads may also go over any audits we might have conducted prior to the call.
  • Once all questions are answered and no one has anything else to ask, one of the design leads will explain our design concept and mock-up process (see the “Explaining Our Design Process” section below), and our UX/content review process (if needed) and what the partner can expect from that.
  • The TAM will wrap things up, stating next steps on both the partner’s end (such as sending us assets or access to a third-party service) and our end (project brief, and any audits we’ve agreed to do).

Discovery call questions

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of the type of questions we like to ask during kick-off calls. Depending on the project, we might already know the answers to some of these questions. There’s also no particular order that we follow when asking these questions. As part of prepping for the call, we suggest going through this list and picking those questions that are the most relevant for this project, based on the information we already have.

We also have a ███████████████ that can be copied and adjusted if and as needed.

Partner’s Goals and Objectives

  1. What are the big-picture goals of your site? (promote a product/service, online sales, convey an image, gather information, etc.)
  2. What is your business mission? What are your key values?
  3. What needs are unmet by your current site? What do you wish it would do?
  4. Who is the target audience for your project? How tech-savvy are they? What content are they looking for? What else do you know about your target audience?
  5. What is the primary “action” the user should take when coming to your site? (make a purchase, become a member, search for information)
  6. What features or sections does the site need to have (if different from current)?
  7. Who is your biggest competition? Why? How are you the same/different?
  8. What is unique about your product/service?
  9. How are you perceived by the general public and/or your community/industry? Are there significant misconceptions about your organization?
  10. Are there any groups that you must be clearly differentiated from?
  11. How does this project fit into the larger work of your organization?
  12. If they’re not on WordPress today: What would make you switch platforms? What would make you redesign?
  13. Are there any business events, promotions, or other calendar considerations we should consider when making the timeline for this project?
    • Do you have any major goals or initiatives planned this year?
  14. What does a successful project or site look like to you?

Partner’s Stakeholder Info

  1. Who are the decision-makers for this project? Who will be our main points of contact?
  2. What was one of the biggest risks you (or your business/organization/etc. depending on the partner) took recently? What was the result?
  3. On a scale of 1–5 (with 1 being very uncomfortable and 5 being very comfortable), how open are you to us pushing you outside your comfort zone with new designs?

Updates & WordPress Onboarding

  1. Who will be primarily responsible for making site updates after the launch?
  2. How would you describe you or your team’s level of experience and comfort with WordPress?
  3. What’s your preferred method of training? (written documentation & instructions, how-to videos, interactive calls where you do the editing yourself and can ask questions, etc.) 
    • We ask this, because once your new site is ready, if needed, our team can provide you with training, documentation, and/or workshops so you and your team can edit and manage the site on your own.

Partner’s Design Considerations / Site Perception

  1. We’re strong advocates for web accessibility and aim to bring those principles into every new site we design and build. When you design for accessibility, you design a better web for everyone. This includes following best practices in color contrasts, typography, animation use, and more. What are your thoughts on this? (If this is a refresh of an existing design but not full-redesign: What are your thoughts on us making tweaks and suggestions for accessibility best-practices, both for your branding and typography?).
  2. What other sites or designs have you seen that might serve as a model or inspiration for yours? What are specific things you like or dislike about these sites?
  3. Do you have existing branding or marketing materials? What tone and personality do they convey?
  4. Do you have a marketing plan or strategic plan that we should consider as we work together?
  5. Do you have a logo? Is there an organization style guide we need to follow?
  6. If you have no branding guidelines, please state what types of fonts, colors, key messages, imagery, and taglines are important.
  7. What adjectives describe how your audience should perceive your website? (Examples include elegant, grassrootsy, corporate, whimsical, cutting edge, etc).
  8. What is your approach to setting your brand apart from the competition?
  9. Tell us more about your current marketing strategy on social media. What’s working/ not working as it relates to the site?
  10. Is there anything that we should avoid in the design?

Partner’s Content Considerations

  1. What content will be on the site?
    • What nav structure? (Will this take cues from an existing site?)
    • What content would you like to include on the homepage?
    • What other pages would you like to include on the site? What type of content should go in each one?
  2. Where will the source content on your site come from? What’s the best way to deliver that tous?
    • Consider if the partner would be open to inputting the content directly into the editor. ███████████████
  3. Are we moving content over from a site?
    • If so, could we get access to the backend of the current site? Or to an export of the content?
    • Should all content be kept or are there pieces that you would like to remove/clean-up or restructure?
    • Are we migrating from a site in some version of WordPress?
      • If so, should other options, subscribers, custom user roles, settings, etc. also be migrated over?
      • What sort of workflows do the site owner or admins currently rely on that might to be unique to their WordPress or environment setup? Tip: have key users record how they login and interact with the WordPress dashboard.
      • What parts of their WordPress setup would they like to improve?
  4. Do you have any other assets (fonts, photos, videos, illustrations, etc) that we should use? If you have third-party assets such as fonts and stock photos, do you have the license to use them, and where are they stored (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.)?
  5. Questions to explore how patterns might be utilized on the site:
    • What type of content will be featured?
      • Will the content mainly be text/or image-led? Or a mix of both? 
      • Will video content be featured?
    • Would you like different types of content structures to be featured, for example, a separate look for varying products? 
    • Do you have any example content currently available? 
    • How comfortable are you utilizing patterns? Would a training call be helpful?
  6. Who in your team will be responsible for generating and providing the content for the new site?

Partner’s Technical Considerations

  1. What administrative tools do you need?
  2. Are there specific technologies or tools you do or don’t want to use?
  3. Are there third-party services or tools you need to integrate with?
  4. Which languages will the site need to support?
  5. What kinds of updates will you want to make yourself – just content, structural changes, deeper visual changes, etc?
  6. Do you work with any contractors or third-party agency today that performs updates on your site? What has the experience been like?
  7. How often will your new website be updated once it’s launched?
  8. Have you recently launched any new products or features? How did that go? Where do breakdowns typically occur?
  9. Do you have any concerns with our recommendation to migrate your domain’s name servers to Pressable (if they’re currently using a DNS service that is not in the top 20 in performance rankings for DNS providers)? ███████████████
  10. Would you consider transferring your domain to WP.com? ███████████████
    • We have an active campaign for domain transfers from Google Domains/Squarespace (valid for the first one million domains)

New Stores and Migrations – WooCommerce Considerations

Goals and Objectives

  1. What kind of products will you be selling?
    • Subscriptions? Paid newsletter? Events/ticketing? Donations? Memberships? ███████████████
  2. As the volume of your sales grows, what are you most concerned about?
  3. Which metrics are most important for you? i.e. total volume of sales, sales by region, etc
    • Can you share some insights into your current store’s performance, such as its revenue or sales figures?
  4. What are your most typical types of sales? i.e. one item purchased at a time, or many items purchased by a single customer at a time?
  5. What was your last large product launch? How did you prepare for that? What was challenging, or what is something you’d want to go differently next time?
  6. Walk me through how you use customer information to create unique experiences today.
  7. How do you handle peaks and valleys in your sales?
  8. What level of customer support do you maintain? How do you flex during peaks and valleys?

Technical considerations

  1. Is this a new store or a migration?
    • If migration:
      • Which platform?
      • Do you need to preserve customers?
      • Do you need to preserve previous sales?
      • Do you need to preserve CC auths?
  2. What kind of payment handler do you want/need to use?
  3. What external services do you need to integrate with? Do the existing services integrate or will we need to migrate? What aspects of your current shop are you looking to preserve (it would help to name the vendors that they’re already using that we’ve identified in our pre-call research)
    • Shipping?
    • Inventory/fulfillment?
    • Taxes?
    • Accounting?
  4. Do you need localization?
    • Currency? 
    • Text translations?
    • Multi-country taxes?
  5. Do you have a budget for third-party extensions or use any today that should be preserved?

Explaining our design process

Once we’re on the same page regarding the discovery questions and the work we’re going to do for our partner’s site, we give them a quick explanation of how our design process works.

UX, Content, Funnel Analysis

If, during the call, we sense a need for major content/structural reorganization or re-thinking, we might suggest a UX / Funnel Analysis. This will help us identify pain points and areas that can be improved. This step would likely be done prior to any visual design work.

What we are able to do when there is not a brand standard in place

This is how we can differentiate what we can do vs. a referral to a design agency. (You don’t have to recite it verbatim):

Automattic’s Special Projects Team looks to incorporate our partners’ current branding, as well as the tone and personality that this branding conveys, throughout our website design and development process. 

If a brand has not yet been instituted, we will work with our partners to create a type treatment of the organization’s name, and to work with them to decide upon the types of fonts, colors, key messages, imagery, and taglines that will be needed to aid in establishing a cohesive message and polished look. If a more extensive branding experience is sought, we are happy to refer our partners to a variety of vetted agencies who specialize in this type of work.

Design Concepts and Mock-ups

Here’s our typical introduction to design concepts and mockups (You don’t have to recite it verbatim):

Design concepts are mini-mood boards that reference site interface elements through font, color, imagery, buttons, and so on. The purpose of a design concept is to sketch enough of a proposed look and feel to share what the design is about without bogging down in finished elements or exact placements. Those will come later, once a design direction is chosen. Design concepts give you just enough of a given look and feel to know if you want to see more of it … enough to decide if it feels right to you or not. After we’ve worked out a design direction in the concept phase, we’ll move forward with mock-ups — usually a few key pages. Once mock-ups are approved, the site will move forward to development.

We’ll reiterate this explanation in follow-up emails and when presenting the concepts.

After the call

Sometimes, the TAM and design lead will jump on another call or in Slack to have a quick debrief, to discuss initial feelings about the project, who might be suited to work on it, and general ideas and questions we might have based on what we learned from the call. The design leads also share any raw notes they took during the call with the TAM, who will post a larger call summary on the P2.

Note: these things don’t all happen on the same day all at once, but they’re all part of the follow-up after the call.

The TAM will do the following:

  • Post call notes on our internal and project P2s
  • Send the partner a recap email of all that was discussed, and follow-up items (e.g. if we need the partner to send us assets, like logos, or photos).
  • If it has not already been done prior to the call: create a project brief (that includes a timeline) and send those off to the partner. Or update the existing project brief, if needed based on what we learned during the call.
  • Work with the design leads to assign a designer to work on the design phase.

The design leads will do the following:

  • Write design directions in a design brief document to hand off to the designer. The design directions should include instructions for the designer on what we’re looking for in design concepts, based on what we learned about our partner and their goals for their site.
  • Work with the TAM to assign a designer to work on the design phase.

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