Onboard your design clients with Notion — free template
This article comes with a free Notion template, feel free to grab it here.
As a designer, one of the best things you can invest in is a solid onboarding experience for your clients. When clients know what to expect from every step of the process, they are more likely to send you things on time, give helpful feedback and be prepared for meetings.
Over the past 6 years, I have had many versions of my onboarding setup and I like to think every new iteration has made my life a little easier. For a long time Trello was my favourite go-to, but once Notion came out, I was able to integrate my old setup and add some new really helpful features.
My goal is to create an onboarding setup that looks beautiful, makes my clients feel at ease and that saves me a ton of time.
Since Notion has worked so well for me, I wanted to share my setup to help other creatives save more time and build better relationships with their clients.
If you like it, you can grab the free template and start using it right away.
What should go into your onboarding process?
Below I will share all the things I include in my own onboarding as a brand designer, but you might want to add some sections to make your version perfect for you. The best way to know what to put is to think back to old projects.
Where did clients get confused?
What took too long and at what stage did you feel stressed or frustrated?
Knowing what has not worked in the past means we can add little notes, reminders and resources to make sure things run smoothly in the future.
My Notion onboarding setup
Attachments, links or writing everything out?
Before we get into the exact layout and details, I wanted to just quickly mention how I use Notion to keep things organised and easy for clients.
Since Notion allows you to embed links, combine tools and even add in to-do lists and more complex projects like Invision projects, it can be tempting to make the on-boarding very extensive and all spelled out at first glance.
In my experience, clients have a better experience when Notion is used to get a clear overview of the project. You can then use links to help them access other tools or tasks they need to complete. It is always a balance between showing enough detail to make things easy to follow and not overwhelming your client.
Example of onboarding that might be overwhelming
Example of a calmer overview
Now, let’s get into the onboarding setup.
The welcome section
Clients are often busy and sometimes you might be working with a team of people who all need to stay up to date.
I like to include a welcome section that gives the client an overview of the project, the goals and a quick navigation to help them find answers to common questions.
In my welcome section, I like to include:
- The scope (you can attach the brief or approved proposal)
- Design agreement (attach the signed copy)
- Invoices (attach invoices and receipts as you go along)
- Contact details
- Projects stages and key dates
Having all this information within easy reach means clients are less likely to email you with questions or forget what the timeline or scope is. The biggest change I have seen since implementing this setup is a drop in scope creep.
Scope creep is when clients ask for small additional requests that were not part of the original project and you do the work without charging more.
Since the project scope is so clearly defined and easy to find using Notion, my clients now stick to the original brief or ask for the cost of extending the scope.
Project stages
Sometimes you want your client to better understand what to expect from each meeting. This will help them prepare questions, understand the work that you put in, and overall become a better partner.
To make the stages easy to follow, I like to use a toggle setup. When the toggles are closed, you get a clear overview of all the stages. When they are open, you get a lot more information about each stage. It can look something like this.
Tasks
To make sure the project is on track and that you have everything you need to do your job, you can create a to-do list for your clients. I like to organise the tasks according to the project stages in a Kanban board, but you could also use a checklist or bullet point list.
What I like about the Kanban setup is that each task becomes a card that can have additional information, like a due date and attachments. This is especially useful if you need to link to feedback tools, attach invoices or provide instructions to help your client complete the task.
Using the right settings
To summarise, Notion is a great way to give your clients a smooth and helpful experience without creating a lot of extra work for yourself.
When you are finished setting up the page and want to share it with your client, I suggest you use the setting ‘can comment’. This setting means your client can add comments on tasks they are working on but you are still protecting the page from being found by someone outside of the project.
If you want to grab the template I designed, go ahead and click here and duplicate the page.
I hope you found this helpful and that you will have a great relationship with your clients with your new onboarding!
