The discovery call is the first conversation between any prospective client and me. It runs about twenty minutes on Google Meet (or by phone if a video call does not work for the day). It is free, it is the only step before any commitment, and it is the only way I take on new clients.
This post explains what the call covers, what I ask, what you should ask back, and what happens whether or not we end up working together.
Why a call rather than email
I work with small business owners. Email is a perfectly fine medium for many things, but for the first conversation it has consistently produced worse outcomes than a short call. The reasons:
Most of the questions I need to ask are open-ended, and most of the answers are easier to give in conversation than in writing. "What does a successful month look like for your business?" is a question that produces a clear answer in 90 seconds of conversation and a fuzzy answer in three days of email back-and-forth.
The call also lets me filter quickly. I do not take on every client; some prospects are not the right fit, either because their needs do not match what I do or because I am not the right vendor for their stage. Twenty minutes on a call surfaces this with much less friction than a multi-day email exchange that ends in a polite no.
For the prospect, the call is also the cleanest way to evaluate me. Most agencies sound impressive in their marketing copy and disappointing in their first conversation; the gap between the two is the signal that matters. A short call lets you decide whether the person you would actually be working with is someone you want to work with.
What I ask
The call has a loose structure. I have a small set of questions I want to get answers to; the order varies based on the conversation. The questions:
What does your business do, and where? Geography, trade, scale. The local-pack work I do is heavily shaped by the city or region the business operates in.
What does a typical customer look like? Homeowner, commercial buyer, agent, builder. Different customer profiles need different things from a website. Different conversion paths.
How do customers currently find you? Word of mouth, Google, paid ads, Yelp, Facebook, the directory in the trade publication. The dominant channel determines what the website needs to do most strongly.
What is your current website doing right and wrong? If the site exists, this is where I learn what the visible problems are from the owner's perspective. The honest answer is sometimes "I do not know," which is itself useful.
What would success look like in the first 90 days? This question separates owners who want a website (vague, abstract) from owners who want specific outcomes (more inspections booked, fewer phone-tag missed calls, the storm-season surge captured). The answer shapes the design priorities.
What is your timeline, if any? Some prospects need to be live before the next busy season; others have no specific deadline. Both are fine, but knowing changes the schedule.
What concerns you about hiring a web designer? The honest answers usually involve cost, lock-in, or having been burned by a previous vendor. Naming the concern up front is the fastest way to address it.
That is the framework, not a script. Most calls cover all of these in some form, with detours into whatever the prospect most wants to talk about.
What you should ask
The call is not a sales pitch directed at you; it is a mutual evaluation. The questions worth asking from your side:
Who actually does the work? The honest answer for any small agency should be a specific person's name. Mine is "me, Jon Ajinga, end to end." The wrong answer is "we have a team" with no specifics.
What stack do you build on, and why? I cover this in detail on the methodology page and across the tech-stack series, but the short version of my answer is "Eleventy + vanilla CSS + Cloudflare Pages, because static sites are fast, secure, and outlast platform churn." If a vendor cannot answer this question with specifics, that is a flag.
What happens if I want to leave? Covered in the service agreement: the domain is yours throughout, the content is yours, you receive a clean static export of the site on exit. No exit fee. No platform lock-in.
How much does it cost, all in? $175 a month flat, $0 down at signing, twelve-month minimum. After year one it is month-to-month. Anything outside the standard scope is $100 an hour with a written estimate first. No retainer creep, no surprise fees.
How long will it take to launch? Two to three weeks from kickoff for a typical service-business site. The build queue is usually one to two weeks out, so total time from discovery call to launch is about a month.
Can I see real client work? The site you are reading is a representative example of what I ship. I have a samples page with six trade-specific demo builds and four real-world live sites I designed and built.
You can ask any of these on the call directly. I will answer them in plain language without dancing.
What happens during the call
Practical detail: the call is on Google Meet by default. I send a calendar invite with the link after you book. There is no preparation required from your side; I do not ask you to fill out anything before the call.
I take notes during the call (visible to me only) on what we discuss. If we agree to work together, those notes become the seed for the proposal and the kickoff documents. If we do not, the notes get archived.
The call ends one of three ways:
- "This sounds like a good fit for both of us." I send the service agreement by email within 24 hours. You sign it whenever you are ready (no expiration on the offer); the engagement starts when you submit the first month's payment.
- "I am not the right fit for what you need." I tell you that on the call and (where I can) point you at someone who is. I do not take engagements that are not a clean fit; nobody is happy at the end of those.
- "We both need to think about it." Some prospects want to evaluate other options before committing. I do not push for a decision on the call. I will follow up with a short email recap a few days later, and you reach back out when you are ready.
None of the three outcomes is the wrong outcome. The call is meant to surface the fit honestly, not to pressure a sign-up.
What I will not do on the call
A few things I explicitly avoid:
I will not pitch. I describe what I do; you decide whether it fits. There is no presentation, no slide deck, no "here is why we are better than the competition."
I will not bash competitors. If you ask me about another web designer, I will tell you what I know factually. I will not run them down in your favor.
I will not pressure a decision. If you want to think about it, that is fine. The pricing on the agreement does not expire.
I will not give you free strategy work. If you want a free audit of your current site, the five-point audit is the right path; I run those independently of any sales process. The discovery call is for the rebuild conversation.
If you have not had a discovery call yet
The booking link is on the contact page. Pick a time that works; I will send the calendar invite. The call is free regardless of what comes after.
If you would rather start with the written form (some people prefer to think on paper before talking), the same form on the contact page accepts a written description of what you are looking for, and I will reply by email before suggesting a call.
Twenty minutes, no commitment, no pitch.
If we are a fit, the next step is a written agreement and the standard plan starts. If we are not, I will tell you that and point you somewhere useful. Either outcome is fine.