A good website is one that has been well thought out from the start. We will suggest some of the points we might consider and show you how we write a set of professional website specifications. Please note that website definitions vary greatly depending on a number of factors some of which are the type of site, the scope of the site and most importantly the budget of the site.
Define in Clear and Concise terms
The specification should be written in clear and concise terms. It should state very clearly what is going to be done, not what might or should be done.
Define the Site Hierarchy
Define the primary content types & segments for your website? – e.g. the home page, product and service pages and contact information. These pages should be clearly defined, which pages exactly and how many.
Define the secondary content of your site? – Secondary information might be mission statements, case studies, contact information and more. These should be as clearly defined as the primary content on the website.
Define Technical Aspects
Indicate the technology that will be used to build the site. Most sites now use ‘Open Source’ software for many reasons. It is more robust, less expensive, more pervasive and much more.
Establish universal standards
Many mature standards e.g. XHTML strict, CSS 2.0, etc. now exist that define clear guidelines to ensure that both browsers and people who might be impaired can access most if not all pages of a website.
Define Functionality and Usability
Client information regarding target audience, purpose of the website and media to be used on the website will define the functionality of the site.
Define the Style and Layout
CSS standards are a guide to controllable style and creative layout for any professional site.
Define any additional requirements
Many additional items are to be considered when creating a website. For example; accessibility, code validation, Maintenance, hosting, support and more.
Quality Assurance
The term quality assurance is easily understood if we transpose it a bit. Giving a client the assurance of quality in all aspects of his project. All our team leaders, content, design, code, quality understand that it is impossible to find our defined destination without this. Quality control is an integral part of all our processes. Quality assurance is portal of perspective for our client as we build and user after we build. On all our projects clients have access to a complete Q & A and weekly version rollouts from the development team.
“We decided that we wanted our developers to come with clear minds, not polluted by some other approach, to learn the way that we liked to develop software, and to put the kind of energy into it that we thought was key”