What is a Web Project Discovery Session?

Before embarking on a new website project, a discovery session is essential to build a solid foundation. This session is an exploratory process that offers a valuable opportunity for you to be heard and understood by the team or agency managing your project.

The primary purpose of these sessions is to gain insight into how you currently use your website, identify the challenges you face, and understand the common issues that arise daily. Skipping a discovery session could mean launching your website project without pinpointing where small, strategic changes could create the most significant impact across your organisation.

Discovery sessions provide an inquisitive space for the web design team or agency to listen, understand, and enhance the overall experience of your website. Externally for your audience– and importantly, internally for you and your team. 

What’s the outcome?

As a given, your new website should perform better, load faster, and engage users more effectively. It will be more accessible, impactful, and even more carbon-efficient. But beyond these improvements, a discovery session can reveal ways to transform your own experience in managing the site. By streamlining the internal authoring process and addressing any daily frustrations, your day-to-day operations will become smoother and more efficient—ultimately having a significant impact on the final outcome.

Benefits of a discovery session

• Streamline: Selling tickets to an event? Raising funds? Need to signpost to an action in a clean and simple way? The session looks at the processes your website needs to facilitate, and make sure that process works for both you and the user.
• Get aligned: During the session, you’ll have the opportunity to take a look at your organisation holistically as a whole, and ensure your website reflects and aids your work– and does it justice.
• Prioritise purpose: By gaining an intrinsic knowledge of your organisation’s beliefs, values and mission, you can then ensure they carry through into your online presence with integrity, pride and purpose.
• Know your position: You’ll gain an understanding of the landscape and industry you’re in, and pinpoint your positioning alongside your competitors– and then this information can be utilised when crafting your new site.
• Zoom in: As well as looking at the bigger picture, the session will also hone in on your internal experience using your own site, making small but mighty shifts that positively impact the entire organisation.
• Make discoveries: A discovery session can help to unearth new opportunities and uncover solutions to the daily digital problems you face. 
• Engage stakeholders: An effective, purposeful website will help you gain full stakeholder alignment on the digital reflection of the business, increasing excitement, engagement and inclusion.
• Reduce pitfalls: By tackling your website struggles, you’ll be able to navigate miscommunications, limit crossed wires and reduce any website-related complaints or questions you regularly face.
• Future proof: To help ensure that your organisation has longevity and sustainability, your new website should set you up for your long-term goals… not just short-term success.

Discovery sessions consider the past, the present and the future. By taking a look at your organisation’s legacy and heritage, assessing where you’re at currently, and then looking ahead to where you want to be, you’ll be able to identify how your online presence needs to change to support and reflect who you are. 

Ready to take the first step? Get the ball rolling and reach out to book your Discovery Session with us.