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What is a website specification?

A website specification is a document that details the purpose and goals for your website. It is used as a planning document that breaks down how the website will look, behave, and be used prior to development taking place.

A typical website specification can include the following items:

• Overview
• Front-end functionality
  • Common features
  • Sitemap and website structure
  • Description of every website page
  • Wireframes (home page and at least 2 other important pages)
  • Miscellaneous functionality
• Back-end functionality
• Use cases
• Conclusion

However, this course is not web development course, and your work will not encompass the entirety of the development work. Instead, we will focus on communicating design decisions and project direction. For this class, you can be expected to accomplish the following:

• Overview
• Front-end functionality
  • Common features
  • Sitemap
  • Description of every website page
  • Wireframes / high-fidelity prototype
  • Miscellaneous functionality
• Use cases
• Conclusion
• Appendix A: Style guide
• Appendix B: High-fidelity prototype

Overviews

The overview is one of the most important sections of your website specification. It contextualizes your work by discussing the background of your organization, the problems you're trying to solve, and your solutions and goals for solving these problems.

When setting these goals, you should do it using SMART model. SMART stands for:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

SMART goals are useful because they set the direction up front by creating realistic, measurable goals that fit within the scope of the project. As the acronym shows, these SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. This model acknowledges the constraints of a project and/or organization and works to create goals that create a great product under those constraints.

Building effective website specifications

There are many resources to help guide you in building a website specification. For the most part, you should strive for clarity, conciseness, and specificity. Documents like website specifications are typically seen by many types of people with varying level of technical skill an, often, with a wide range of decision-making power. Both the developers and upper management should be able to understand what is going on in the specification. This does not mean that you have to make every single section understandable by every single person. Rather, make sure that each section is crafted effectively. The different sections serve different purposes, often for different people. Make sure they are complete and easy to understand.

Resources and Key Takeaways

SMART Goals

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/smart-goals.htm

How to write a website specification | We Make Websites

Site Characteristics

...what should the website do?

• If it's a brochure site, most pages will be 'static' in the sense that they don't react to user actions. The exception here is usually contact pages that have interactive forms.
• If it's an e-commerce site, list out any requirements for your home, product listing, search and product detail pages. If your checkout will be non-standard, for example, it allows customers to customize their orders, information on this should be included.
• If it's anything more advanced or unusual than this, write a detailed list of what every user should be able to do.