"Establishing your site's aim, its content and the features it will offer users and your staff is an essential stage of the website life cycle."

Steven Smith, Living Websites - Understanding the Lifecycle

Writing the website development brief

We help organisations identify and determine the key features of their new or re-developed website or intranet and then we write the website development brief. The website brief is the blueprint for the new website and enables potential developers to provide a quotation for undertaking the website redevelopment.

Our methodology for preparing a website redevelopment brief involves a combination of staff interviews, user-needs analysis, background research and the application of our own experience.

Once we have worked with our clients to help them articulate the scope and nature of their website and its likely cost, we are usually then engaged to write the website development brief.

The development brief, to which web developers would respond with quotes and solutions, usually contains the following:

• the organisation’s history, industry sector, goals, products and services
• the aims and target audience of the website
• the nature, scope and organisation of the content
• information architecture - how the content should be arranged
• the scope and nature of its integration with office systems, databases and processes
• design and branding guidelines
• the nature and scope of the interaction with the user eg e-commerce
• how the site is to be maintained eg content management system
• technical issues: speed, capacity, integration with office systems
• legal issues: the contract, compliance with state and federal laws
• how tenderers are to respond to the document

So contact us and talk to us about how we can help you.

Related topics

• A-Z of managing your website workshop

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