If clients often say - "I have a website, do something with the site, I want to comb it, I don't know what to do", what then to offer?

Question

Project management

I can even give an example in the comments of such a site from a client (applied today).

This is probably 70% of all calls.
They have from 1 to infinity sites. They are often made 5-10 years ago (rarely 2-3), they are sometimes filled, sometimes not. No one is running the site. "That's something I want, I don't know what." For clarification, what is it? Answers:
- comb
- tighten
- put in order
- take care of them
- I don’t know myself
- adjust
- build
, etc. in this style.
According to garlic, what will really help them, what to advise in order to be useful in the first place, to do what would pull money - this is not in the rules. Do no harm and be useful - in the rules.
At first they tried to figure out what they needed, a lot of energy wasted. Mb there is a universal solution? Or at least something. I would appreciate advice and answers.

Answer 1

Drink coffee with the customer, let him talk about his business. Problems related to the site will definitely come up and for sure the reason for finding a person like you. Problems have been identified - deal with them.
Next, it will not be superfluous to do an audit ...

Answer 2

As a rule, you act as an adviser here. And for this, perhaps even for an audit, you take money (to work for this, even if it is a banal audit - such a thing, information costs money).
Compose an algorithm for analyzing the site. You run the site. You draw up a technical task, highlighting important points in bold and large, small and unimportant ones in subparagraphs. Consider approximate time / money. Show the TK and the amount to the client. Usually at this stage - if the client really wants to "comb" and finalize his site - he gives you the go-ahead. If he simply had no one to talk to "for life", he falls off.
Here is a Checklist for you , go straight through the points from top to bottom, and show the cons to your client. The checklist does not cover all the nuances, but gives a good picture for analysis.

Answer 3

Run away from them. They don't know what they want.

Answer 4

You demand to write a short list of what exactly does not suit you right now and what you want to add to the customer.

Answer 5

Stupidly, like an idiot, you ask why you need a site, you bring the site to the customer’s goal for a high price

Answer 6

I agree with Evgeny
here it’s worth going from the needs of the business - it means that some site does not close
or convert, as a rule, but there are no universal solutions in this matter
conversation and audit)
yesterday an article was published about different widgets to increase conversion, we are also engaged in various mechanics with reviews of real people , but everything is selected based on the goals of the business and the initial audit, unfortunately there is no silver bullet yet)

Answer 7

For requests like this:

1. Technical audit and correction of gross errors (the easiest way is to parse the site with NetpeakSpider and fix critical errors + errors indicated in Yandex.Webmaster)
   
2. Collection of semantics / grouping and overlaying it on the current site structure - which areas are not covered - adding pages
   
3. Editing meta tags and page content
   

This is a list of works that are quite consistent with the request: comb / tighten / tidy.