[WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT BRIEF] / 1

WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT BRIEF

Website name
Current Website URL
Domain Provider
Hosting Provider
Current CMS / Example: Wordpress or Drupal or Joomla or BigCommerce, etc.
Client Name & Contact details

BRAND HISTORY

  • Describe why you decided to launch your particular business.
  • When was launch
  • Describe how your business has evolved over time and the different websites you might have had (add screen shots)
  • Describe your top three products or services and why your customers love it (top three reasons)

Tip: It is extremely valuable for your website developer to have a great understanding of your business, the top reasons why you are in the market and know first hand why your customers love your services.

COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

  • What are your top three website competitors?
  • What is your USP – unique selling proposition compared with your main competitors?
  • What do you think their websites are doing right and wrong?

REASONS FOR WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT

  • Why having a new/revamp website will contribute to the current business objectives and the core elements of the brand.

MOST PROFITABLE CUSTOMER SEGMENT

Describe your most profitable customer segment. Tip: Add demographic and psychographic insights. Build personas if needed.

  • Any consumer research done that can be relevant?
  • Who they are
  • Where they live and work
  • What they like to do in their free time
  • What type of media they consume (other websites, magazines, tv series, events).
  • What’s the main reason they buy from you: convenience, premium brand, cheap, variety of options, performance, heritage, luxury, support, other?
  • What are your most valuable customers looking for? What are the top two key motivators or incentives for people to buy from you?
  • What are the expected most popular web pages?
  • Why do you believe your prospective customers are not buying when visiting your website? Top three reasons.
  • Are there any regional considerations when selling to your most valuable customer: Metro vs Regional? State vs State? Other?

CREATIVE GUIDELINES

  • Confirm whether branding guidelines will be attached on this brief. Your branding guidelines document should have your brand personality, tone, voice, best logo usage, font type, exact branding colour palette,
  • Do you have all the images for each page and blog post to be created? Or you need the developer company to source via photographer or an image stock bank?
  • Is there any Pinterest Inspiration board that can visually describe your brand?

USABILITY

  • Responsive style: fits nicely on ipads, iphones, and desktop?
  • Breadcrumbs: Do you need them?
  • Call to actions: Any creative copy type in particular?
  • Site Map: very important for SEO but it can also be omitted.
  • Related pages: Do you want to provide related pages/products information?
  • Website search box: users to be able to search for anything in particular.

WEBSITE KEY OBJECTIVES

  • What are the top three most important actions your prospective and current customers should be able to easily complete on your website?i.e. calls, email enquiries, completed purchases/subscriptions, read articles, etc.

WEBSITE CONTENT

  • List all the pages and blog posts you want us to publish for launch date.
  • Are there going to be any product pages, section pages or blog posts changes in the next 6 or 12 months? If so, which ones. List the most important ones.
  • Do you want to transfer all the existing content (titles, descriptions, paragraphs and images) into your new website or do you aim to have new content?
  • For any new pages, will you provide the copywriting or do you need a copywriter?
  • For the new website, is there any download files users should have access to? (Pdf, etc.) If so, how many and from which page URLs?
  • Contact us form? If yes, what fields do you need? Please specify. Which email address the contact form should send the leads to?
  • Do you want a captcha or any other tool to minimize spammy emails?
  • Do you need social media icons on your pages and blog posts (like icon, share icon, comments icon) Do they have to be discreet or highly featured?

Tip: You might want to offer your developer initial mock ups on how you want key sections of your website. Options can include:

HOME PAGE

  • What are the top elements to be featured on homepage
  • How many sections/tabs users should be able to click on?
  • How many columns your home page should have?
  • Footer: what info should be added. Should it replicate on all website pages?

PRODUCT CATEGORY PAGES

  • How you want users to be able to browse or find your products by:Options include: by material, by size, by colour, by style, by price, by designer, by season, by weight, by capacity, by collection, by brand, by new arrivals, by items on sale or any other way.
  • Filter options: ascending AND descending alphabetic order? Any other?

PRODUCT PAGES

  • Which exact product pages should be ready by launch date?
  • Images on product pages: how many per product page?
  • Video content on product pages: self hosted or externally hosted (embedded)?
  • What are the essential items you want on your product pages? Add mock up.
  • Would you like “save this” functionality on each product page.
  • Would you like “share this” functionality on each product page?
  • Would you like “user rating” functionality on each product page?This can mean user registration login functionality.
  • Would you like “user reviews” functionality on each product page? This can mean user registration login functionality.
  • Would you like “similar products” functionality on each product page?

SOCIAL MEDIA FUNCTIONALITY

  • “Share this page” icons: should they go on all pages? Any exclusion?
  • Comment boxes: which comment box? Facebook, Disq? Other? In all pages? Any exclusion?
  • Embed Instagram image galleries. On which pages? Any exclusion?

BLOG POSTS

  • List all categories you want your blog post to be part of.
  • What post format you want your blog post to be? One column, two columns, etc.
  • Related posts box at the end of each post?
  • Commenting boxes. Facebook or Disq commenting boxes?
  • Any category you would like to hide and only accessible from Google searches?

STANDARD PAGES

  • What standard page format you want your pages to be? One column, two columns, etc.

CHECK OUT PAGES

  • Which shopping cart would you like to use? Woocommerce? Other.
  • List optimal check out process. Example: you want users to first add email address or membership number before going to the payment page.
  • Describe when exactly a voucher or gift card codes should be prompted.
  • Upselling: Would you like “similar products” functionality to be added on the checkout process?
  • Which icons you would like to add on the main check out pages. Options might include: Free shipping icon, same day dispatch icon, Pick up in Store icon, Free returns icon,

CONTACT US PAGES

  • Google map listing all your locations?
  • What exact location information you would like to be added?
  • Would you like users to be able to Skype call to any of your locations?

OTHER SUPPORT PAGES

Add your specific requirements for any of the below pages. If you do not need them, delete them from this brief document.

  • Order Tracking Page: Describe information and map out the system used to offer order tracking to users.
  • Frequent Asked Questions FAQ Page: List the top 20 or 50 frequent asked questions that might help you minimise customer calls and enquiries. Select how you want that information to be listed: alphabetical order?
  • Pricing and Payment Information Page:
  • Shipping and Returns Information Page:
  • Support Centre Page: On this page you might want to confirm how users can connect with your support centre staff.
  • Live chat Pop Up: would you like to add the ability for users to “live chat” with your support team? Which live chat platform you would like to use?
  • User voice page: What platform you would like to use to allow users to submit an improvement idea and vote for other user improvement ideas. Some platforms include Uservoice, Zendesk and others. This is an example.

SUBSCRIPTION PAGE AND/OR BOX

You want to be able to capture users contact details so you can send them offers, discount vouchers, special promotions and more.

  • Describe which pages should have a subscription box and/or if you need a stand-alone subscription page.
  • Define fields and whether they are mandatory or not.

CORPORATE PAGES

Add your specific requirements for any of the below pages. If you do not need them, delete them from this brief document.

  • About Us Page: Our story – Our business – Our directors – Our Management team.
  • Media Page: Media Releases – Media Contacts.
  • Franchises Page
  • Careers Page: Graduate Programs – Current job openings
  • Investor Centre Page: Annual Reports – Corporate Governance – Financial Presentations – Dividends – Key Dates – My shareholding – Share Price Information – Webcasts
  • Advertise with Us Page: this page provides information on how to advertise on your website and other media properties you might have.
  • Legal Page
  • Terms and Conditions Page

CONTENT TYPES

IMAGES

  • Tip: a great image file size for the web does not need to be heavier than 350kb.Please confirm images types (jpeg, gif, png) and file sizes

VIDEO CONTENT

  • Does your new website need its own branded video player?
  • Does your website will host the video player or external host? Example: Vimeo, other?
  • Do you have video content on Youtube or Vimeo ready to be embedded on your website pages?

DOMAINS AND SUBDOMAINS

  • Would it be a new domain name?
  • Are there any subdomains content needed to transfer?
  • Can developer create and use a new subdomain to build the new website and once it is ready point to the final domain name?

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION (SEO)

TIP: when deciding for your CMS, ensure it allows for great SEO elements such as h1, h2, meta descriptions, meta titles, image captions, image descriptions, and image alt tags.

  • Include the latest keyword research that includes the top 100 search terms combinations you want your website to rank for.
  • Does your current website have Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Bing webmaster tools accounts? Please provide them.
  • Do you want option to add meta keywords, meta descriptions, meta titles and image alt tags?
  • Are you planning to have new URL’s and you need to transfer old urls to the new ones? (301 ones)

TRACKING AND TAGGING

  • Do you have any other tracking codes we need to ensure they are transfer to your new website?
  • Are you using any tagging bucket such as Google Tag Manager? If so, please provide login details.

SEASONAL CONSIDERATIONS

  • When (within the year) are you expecting to have peak traffic and low traffic?
  • Is there any international, national, state, city or community events that will affect the traffic of your website?

MANDATORIES

Things that the new website should have (be very specific)

KEY TIMINGS

  • When would you be able to complete payment?
  • When would you like to see the first delivery of your new website on staging server (aka testing server)?
  • When would you like your new website to go live?

ADDITIONAL INFO

  • Info that might help with the development of the site.

NEXT STEPS

  • Describe the next steps to move forward your website development project.

---- END----

Was this template useful?

Tell us how this template can be improved!

Follow us for Best Digital Marketing tips 

Facebook - Instagram -LinkedIn-Twitter- Pinterest

Designed by eDigital –