A Detailed Guide for Writing Specifications Content for a Website

Drafting a well-detailed Guide for website specs ensures that your web project comes to fruition. It also helps developers to provide more precise quotations. Are you in need of writing a thorough specification for your site but don’t know where to start? Well, we’ve got you covered. The guide below will provide you with all the desired assistance to make your project successful.

If you want to plan a successful web project without running into costly challenges in the process, then you need a focused, detailed web specification, including technical specifications. In fact, writing such content keeps the project running flawlessly as well as helping you to develop a web project that fulfills the objectives of both your enterprise and its visitors.

As far as this detailed guide is concerned, I will break down all the important components of a reliable web specification and their importance. Also, the guide will focus on the valuable lessons we’ve learned so far while operating a WordPress-based entity.  It also touches on the meaning of web and technical specification document, the writing process, and its content.

What is a website specification?

In essence, it describes a document that outlines the techniques and goals of a web project. It must highlight various constraints, including technological challenges, budget, or timeframe. Additionally, a specification can also outline other project details like the team.

What should be included in a website specification?

A detailed website specification document is crucial for setting clear guidelines and expectations for any web project. This document, often based on a website specification template, acts as a reference throughout the project, covering everything from technical requirements to user experience design. Below are the essential components every website specification should include.

The list below comprises the common sections. That said, you can decide which sections to mention when writing your technical specification document or add those that are not on the list.

All the vital aspects of the project must be featured in your technical specification document.

Guide for website specification

• Overview
• Team and Contact Information
• Objectives
• Project phases
• Content requirements and structure
• Content Types
• Webpage templates
• Design
• Functionality
• Convenience
• Device & browser support
• Hosting
• Constant maintenance & support
• Assumptions
• Milestones
• Deadlines
• Budget

Overview

Begin with an overview that summarizes the project’s goals, the website’s purpose, and the intended audience. It provides a general summary of the web project as well as the entity executing it. In this case, an overview can be:

• About your entity
• The problem you’re trying to fix
• Target audience: who’s the main users, such as prospective customers, clients, or community members.
• Project goals: Describe what the website should be able to do, such as enhancing brand visibility, creating leads, or giving useful resources.

Team and Contact Information

What is most important to note about any website or technical specification document is that one needs to clearly describe the project team structure for smooth communication and execution of the project. A well-described team section brings out the project roles and responsibilities of every stakeholder who is involved, hence increasing accountability for effective collaboration and team goals in the whole web development process.

Decision-makers: They have the last say in critical aspects of the website project, selecting design approvals, deciding what would go into the budget, or anything related to functionality. This is for assurance by the development team about where to send their questions or ask for an endorsement.

Key Stakeholders: List the primary stakeholders involved in the project. This could include project lead, web developers, content strategists, UX/UI designers, and SEO specialists.

Role Definitions: Clearly define the role of each team member through a description of the contribution that each will make to the project. For example, the project manager will provide organization to the timeline and overall deliverables of the project, and the content strategist shall engage in developing the structure and taxonomy of content.

Contact Information: Give direct contact details for each stakeholder. Include email addresses, phone numbers, and any relevant communication tools (Slack or Microsoft Teams) used for the project.

Objectives

Setting clearly defined, measurable objectives and goals is the foundation of any web project that will ensure success.

This part of the document briefly describes the goals of the particular project. Such information gives developers a clue of all the things they intend to accomplish, which, in turn, helps in recommending the most suitable solutions.

• Website objectives: begin with outlining the primary purpose of the website. A good example could be “to increase brand visibility,” “to drive conversions,” or “to improve user actions and engagement.”
• Quantifiable goals: each goal should have a measurable outcome. For instance, “Increase organic traffic by 30% within six months” or “Achieve 5,000 downloads of a lead-generation resource within the first quarter.”
• Secondary goals: include additional objectives like “improving website navigation,” “enhancing page load speed,” or “building a database of 1,000 qualified leads.”
• Business goal alignment: link each one of those objectives up to main business growth and goals. If that’s an objective of “improve SEO performance,” then link it to the goal of increased sales because of better search engine rankings.

While writing this section, make sure all goals are channeled toward the SMART criteria:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Assignable
• Realistic
• Time-related

Project phases

In case the project forms a larger project, or if there’ll be other phases after the current project is completed, then you have to list it all down. Doing so will help show how and where the current project fits in your future undertakings.

For instance:

Phase 1: Marketing Website – present project

Phase 2: include E-commerce

Phase 3: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) integration

Content requirements and structure

Also referred to as information architecture, the content structure features various sections and is determined by the size and complexity of your web content.
Content requirements and structure are the definition of how the content will be organized, what types of content are required, and how that fits into the overall information architecture. A very clear content strategy allows users and search spiders to navigate and understand the site effectively.

Site map

Create a site map showing the hierarchy of the website. This section typically comes in the form of a diagram showing the type of “tree” (a website pages’ hierarchical structure)of main categories and subcategories or it may be more involved architecture for large sites.  A site map can also feature a “page template” as shown below. In SEO, this is important as a well-organized site map improves the crawlability and user experience of a website.

You can find helpful tools for developing website site maps out there. For our case, we stick to Gloomaps.

Content Types

A website can feature different content types. At the basic level, expect to find both web pages and posts. A post is basically sequential, like news, whereas a page is timeless, for example, About Us.

Other typical types of content include:

• Testimonials
• Products
• People
• Case studies
• Product pages

For each type, the related data must be listed. Therefore, “Person” content may require the data outlined below:

• First name
• Surname
• Position
• Bio
• Email address
• Telephone number

Indicate if specific templates are to be used on certain types of content. For example, a testimonial template or blog posting format.

Taxonomies

Essentially, a taxonomy refers to a classification scheme for your web content. You can come up with taxonomies for the entire website, which will be utilized across various content types. In the case of a blog, expect to find two main taxonomies, including ‘Tags’ & ‘Categories’.

The two primary types of taxonomy include:

1. Hierarchical taxonomy – for instance, “Categories”
2. Non-hierarchical –  for example,  “Tags”

Internal linking structure

Describe how content pages will interlink. For example, each blog post might link to related posts, relevant product pages, or key service offerings to boost SEO and user retention.

Webpage templates

A template encompasses a given information layout.  Examples of basic webpage templates are as listed below:

• Home
• Our team
• Blog post
• Contact information – might include a form and map
• News archive
• Technical spec template

In case you have mockups for such webpage templates, kindly include them in this section.

Design

The design specifications section describes the visual and functional aesthetics of the website. This includes design elements that comprise brand guidelines, responsive design, and UI specifications.

For this part, the content will be determined by whether developing a design is outlined in the scope of work, or whether a design is already in existence.

Already existing design

If the design exists, then you can reference it in this section.  You can avail your design assets in the following ways:

• Sketch files
• Flat image files
• PDFs (can be annotated)
• PSD files

Make sure you present annotations or a guide for the following details:

• Spacing
• Animations
• Hover states
• Colors
• Grid systems
• Typography rules

Responsive designs

Nowadays, people can view various sites on a broad array of screens and gadgets. Hence, it’s vital to factor in the appearance of your website, primarily on tiny screen devices like smartphones, and prepare technical design documents.

UI elements

List all UI elements that should be standard throughout the site. This would include typography that includes font styles, sizes, colors for headings, body text, and links.

• Color scheme: define primary, secondary, and accent colors with color codes to be specific to the brand.
• Spacing and layouts: Padding, margins, and alignment guides help define an appealing layout.
• Animations: describe the purpose of animations; for example, hover button effects or loading spinners. Set standards for smoothness and frequency, so that if this animation might make the site slow, those standards can be followed.

Accessibility concerns

Mention the standards for accessibility in terms of contrast ratios that support readability, ALT text on images, or any other approach to make the website accessible to all.

Design as a section of your project scope

You have to provide the preferred stylistic path and guidance on the ways of overcoming the challenges involved, if visual design is a vital aspect of your project.

Although each designer has their own procedure, it‘s imperative to provide the following:

• Supporting materials – such as brochures
• Brand guidelines – like logos, fonts, colors, and other graphic
• Competitors and success evaluation

Functionality

It entails how your website functions. Most websites have to be integrated with APIs from third parties.  For such cases, all the integrations have to be highlighted in this part based on how they’ll operate and any other details required.

Core Functionality describes the major functions the platform requires to be able to exist for its purpose.

Depending on your respective web project, you may consider highlighting various functionality examples, including:

• Tracking and analytics
• Multi-lingual functionalities
• Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). This is a factor in search engine optimization and also in end-user trust.
• E-commerce capabilities will be required such as product pages, how checkout options should appear and function, and what payment gateways would need integration.
• User account management to outline the ability of users to create an account, recover password functionality, and/or edit profile information.
• Third Party services and integrations
• APIs for Data Sharing, in case there will be requirements to share data between the website and another piece of software, such as a CRM, or even an analytics platform.

Convenience

This means creating sites that work for everybody, irrespective of ability, technology, or location. WCAG are standards created to help web developers in coming up with more accessible sites. If you have specific technical requirements, do not hesitate to list them here.ites. If you have specific requirements, do not hesitate to list them here.

Device & browser support

Today websites can be navigated on various gadgets and web browsers. For this reason, you must find out which browser or device needs support due to the varying technological needs.

This part has to outline the specific gadgets and web browsers, on which your site ought to undergo testing on. In case you have data from such technical aspects, particularly drawn from the analytics of a current or new website, it might be helpful to mention it here.

Hosting

Here, include all the website’s hosting technical requirements. If you’ve already identified a hosting service provider, provide information regarding that platform in this part of the website technical specification document.

Constant Maintenance & Support

Websites should be enhanced, preserved, and upgraded regularly, and have ongoing support. In case you are utilizing a WordPress site, the code base will rapidly worsen if it’s not updated constantly. In turn, this can cause security, performance, and compatibility problems.

Assumptions

Making assumptions regarding the parties in charge of certain operations is a common problem. For instance, who will add the desired content? To avoid such a case, ensure that your guide for website specification outlines all that you require to make the site complete.

Milestones

Most projects, particularly those that leverage a fixed-cost technique, have specific milestones from the word go. These are clearly set phases whereby you’ll be dealing with website different aspects. Examples of typical web project milestones include:

• Go Live
• Feedback
• Wireframes
• Development
• Designs

Deadlines

Even though you do not have specific milestones, having a clue of the timeframe involved, primarily if there’s a set deadline, is important. Outline all the set deadlines in your website specification document.

Budget

Your financial plan ought to be mentioned in this particular section of the document. You can also break down the details according to the milestones involved in the project. Furthermore, mention any information regarding the desired pricing model. to be mentioned in this particular section of the document.

Download Website Specification template

Download

Sample template

When developing a website specification template, it can streamline your planning process and then just replicate it on other projects. Consider building out a template and organizing the template in the key sections above so that each project requires minor customizations.

Section	Details
Project Overview	[Describe project goals, scope, and purpose]
Team and Contacts	[List key team members and roles]
Objectives	[SMART goals for the website]
Content Structure	[Site map, page types, and taxonomies]
Design and Style Guide	[Existing assets or new design guidelines]
Functional Requirements	[Feature list like e-commerce, SSL]
Accessibility Standards	[List WCAG or ADA compliance needs]
Browser & Device Support	[Outline device/browser compatibility]
Hosting and Domain	[Hosting provider details if available]
Maintenance Plan	[Ongoing support requirements]
Timeline and Milestones	[List project deadlines and checkpoints]
Budget	[Outline project budget per phase]

To Wrap it Up!

A comprehensive website specification differentiates between a successful and unsuccessful website project. It aids in conveying your enterprise’s requirements and objectives to the various internal and outsourced teams involved. A successful start will help you prevent costly hurdles down the road in this particular section of the document. You can also break down the details according to the milestones involved in the project. Furthermore, mention any information regarding the desired pricing model.