Stop 1 of 8 · Weekly
Discovery to sitemap
Walk out of the call with a sitemap, a copy plan, a timeline and the list of facts only the client can give you.
The hour that decides the build
Dany's discovery call with Ridgeline Dental runs fifty minutes and produces four pages of notes, a third of them about parking. Somewhere in there is the site: five pages, two of which the practice has not thought about yet, and eleven facts nobody in the room could confirm. The old way was to read the notes twice, sleep on it, and send a sitemap two days later. Now she pastes the notes while the call is still warm and gets the sitemap, the page purposes, the copy plan and the client's homework back in one go, then spends her time arguing with the parts that are wrong.
Record the call when the client agrees to it and paste the transcript. If you did not record, type the notes in as they are, half sentences and misspellings included.
What discovery has to produce
| Output | What good looks like |
|---|---|
| Sitemap | Every page, its parent, one sentence on why it exists |
| Copy plan | Per page: what it needs, how long, who writes it |
| Client questions | The facts only the client has, numbered, answerable in one email |
| Timeline | Build order driven by what you are waiting on |
The questions list is the one that pays for itself. Most of the delay on a small site is a fact nobody asked for in week one: the real opening hours, the insurance plans they take, whether the second location is still open.
Try this
Here are my notes from a discovery call with a dental practice that wants a new five page site. Give me four things and nothing else. 1. A sitemap: every page, its parent, and one sentence on why the page exists. 2. A copy plan: for each page, what it needs, roughly how many words, and whether the client or I write it. 3. A numbered list of the facts only the client can give me, written so they can answer it in one email. 4. Anything they said in the call that contradicts something else they said. [paste the call notes]
Split that sitemap into In scope, five pages, and Suggested later. For each later page give one line on what it would do for a patient and how much build time it would cost me. Order the later list by what somebody choosing a dentist would miss most.
Build a three week timeline backwards from the client questions list, with a client review on the Wednesday of week two. Tell me which pages I can start before they answer anything, which are blocked on photos, and which are blocked on facts.