Specification Template to Use
Checklist Goals
Use the following checklist to help you learn more about your business, your goals and requirements. You can use this as an exercise to help your specification or you can include this is as separate document.
Business Overview
Explain in one concise sentence WHAT your organisation does.
Why does your company require a website?
What are my main business objectives for having a website?
What are the main reasons a user may come to the site?
What are the key actions you would like your users to complete?
Why should people choose your organisation?
The Market
Who are your main competitors?
What will make a customer choose you over your competitors?
What size is your company?
What countries do you operate in?
How long have you been established?
Likes and Dislikes
About your existing site (if applicable)
What do you think works well on your current site and why?
How do you think your current site could be improved and why?
Site Structure
Detail how you might envisage the structure of your site
Does your site need any specific or bespoke functionality?
Which parts of the site do you see being updated regularly?
Demographic
Who do you think your target audience are?
Are there any competing sites out there doing things really well or that you think are a success, and why?
How does your organisation or product/service make people feel?
Think of key words to describe the impression you would like your site to make on anyone visiting
Marketing
How do you see users finding your site?
How will you measure the success or failure of your site?
Are there any public perceptions about you that you need to challenge?
What words should people associate with your organisation?
Checklist - Details
Domain and Hosting
Do you already own the domain?
Do you require hosting?
Current CMS
What CMS / Platform are you currently using?
Do you have a preferred CMS / Platform?
ECommerce
Do you need an ECommerce Module
Do you have a Payment Gateway setup or a preferred merchant bank?
How many products will you have?
What integrations do you need?
Functionality and Extensions (Eg. Looking for ability to have recurring subscriptions, ability to have booking functionality)
Content
Do you have any branding for the business?
Do you have the skills & resources available to carry out a content audit of your existing website?
Who will be responsible for generating content?
Can you provide any brand guidelines (preferably incorporating details on tone of voice, phraseology etc)?
Do you have any photos or imagery to be used on the site?
Spec Template
Brief
- One paragraph of the work
Business Overview
- History of the business
- Size of the team
- Key people for sign off
- State of the project
– Previous partners
Current Website
- Current Site
- Current Platform / Technology Stack
Our Goals
- Specify the business model
- Specify your niche and unique business proposition
- Problems and frustrations with current setup
Responsibilities
Here we can list out which jobs you are doing and which you want the supplier(s) to do. If you have already awarded a job to a supplier, you can list this here.
- Functional Specification
- Site Architecture / User Experience
- Design
- Content
- Configuration
- Development
- Ongoing
Site Architecture / User Experience
- List any specific requirements
- List any work already completed here
Design
- Supply and existing creative
- Design brief
- Sites I like / don’t like
- Brands we associate with / don’t
Functionality Requirements
- Functionality brief
Timeframes
When do you need the project started by and completed by?
How flexible are you with the timeframe?
Price Flexibility - Would you like the spec to compromise on functionality or cost?
Budget
What is your budget?
What is your ongoing monthly budget?
Deposit - It's standard to request a 40% deposit for a project. Are you comfortable with this.
Communication / Sign off
- Tools
- Weekly Standup meeting
Team
- How many
- Who leads
Ongoing Expectations
- Ongoing maintenance
- Ongoing support
- Any custom development upkeep
- Training
Replying to Spec
- Dates to reply by
- Choice criteria
– What we are looking for– What we don’t want
Login Credentials
Add the relevant information below. Make sure that you are secure with how you handle this sensitive information.
Existing Platforms / Services
- Current Website
– Login URL– Username– Password - Domain
– Login URL– Username– Password - Hosting
– Login URL– Username– Password - FTP
– Host– Port– Username– Password - Email Marketing
– Login URL– Username– Password - Payment Gateway
– Login URL– Username– Password - Payment Gateway
– Login URL– Username– Password - SSL Certificate information
Access Provided
I have provided access to the following services:
- Google Analytics account to (insert email address)
- Google Web Master Toolsto (insert email address)
- Google Adwords to (insert email address)
- Bing to (insert email address)
Website Information
- Contact Email address to send to
Social Media URLs
YouTube
(Other)
Files
- Folder of purchased stock images
- Logo in large sizes
- Branding documents
- Terms and Conditions
- Privacy Policy
Specification Example 1 - (ECommerce Development Only)
- Brief
- We are looking for a new design and development of our e-commere website. We have an existing site and branding. We want to refresh this and have specific integrations we need to work.
- Business Overview
- We are a 10 year old retail business based in Brighton, UK. We have a bricks and mortar shop and have been trading online for 2 years. We have seen significant growth in our online sales this last year in particular.
- We have a team of 6 people. This project will be managed by Tom, Alice and Hassan are the two Directors in the company who will sign off on all work.
- Current Website
- We have previously worked with another company based abroad called InfoTech Ltd.
- We have reached the limit of their expertise now we have grown and have more specialised business requirements.
- Current Site: https://brightonshirts.com
Current Platform(s): Shopify, VendHQ Inventory - Our Goals
- We are looking to grow our online business by increasing sales and reducing the manual work involved. Specifically :
- Increase our Traffic
- SEO, increase rankings, authority page for art-inspired gifts.
- Improve user experience through ease of use and few clicks to buy.
- Emphasise the values of our brand, generate interest and excitement.
- Provide reliable and secure customer journeys.
- Landing pages that maximise conversion.
- Increase our Overseas sales
- Setup reliable ongoing maintenance of our site
- We find the current site is hard to update, slow and requires too much manual work.
Responsibilities / Team
Below you can see the responsibilities yet to be confirmed (TBC). We are looking for a supplier who can take on these responsibilities listed below.
- Functional Specification — TBC
- Site Architecture / User Experience — Us
- Design — Susan Cregg Designs Ltd.
- Content— Us
- Configuration — TBC
- Development — TBC
- Ongoing — TBC
Site Architecture / User Experience
- Home
- Shop
- Product Pages
- Pages:
- About Us
- T+Cs
- Privacy
- Contact
- Custom Landing Page
- News (Blog)
- Posts
Design
We want to to continue to use our branded creative. Our designer Susan Cregg has produced PSDs from which we want to build the website.
She has produced designs for the following sections:
- Kitchen Sink Design Page of most common elements
- Home page
- Shop
- Product Pages
We are happy to use default structures with our stylings for elements not covered, such as the cart and checkout pages.
Content
Some filler content should be added to the page templates. We will add and curate all content on the site. We will be adding all content, so please use filler text if no text supplied from designs and we can replace this.
Please include an example of each page template, department pages, and product pages.
Functionality Requirements
- New design with responsive layout
- Faster site speed
- Better integrations with:
- Our accountancy system
- Our warehousing system
- Software
- We have identified WordPress and WooCommerce as suitable platforms, but are open to your feedback.
- Hosting / Domains
- We currently use ACME brand are interested to move to a faster host with staging site functionality.
- SSL - We are looking to purchase an SSL certificate
Configuration Information
- Payments
- Payments will be processed entirely by a secure, dependable 3rd party payment gateway which manages all payment off-site enabling simple compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). The shop currently makes use of WorldPay, however we are open to considering Stripe (specifically stripe.js, for PCI DSS purposes).
- Inventory Sync
- Currently the site uses Vend Inventory.
QA / Feedback
We expect the designer and developer to test the site on multiple devices and screen sizes. We will then provide a round of feedback for items that do not correspond to what we have agreed.
Timeframes
Deadline to reply: 1st June
Award Contract: 7th June
Dates for completion: August
Flexibility: We need to be live and prepared for Christmas peak in seasonal traffic. Therefore no later than mid-September.
Budget
- Range: £7000 - £9000 (inc Vat)
- Ongoing: £100 per month for hosting, domains and SSL. We would expect to require one day every few months for updates.
Communication / Sign off
- We use Basecamp to manage our projects and would like our suppliers to use this as well.
- We would like weekly standup meetings where we will discuss the progress of the project.
Ongoing Expectations
- Going Live
- The supplier will manage the transition to the new site at an agreed time & date. The supplier will implement a considered 301 redirect mapping of pages from the old site to the new, and rectify any gaps that might be apparent on having moved to the new site.
- Ongoing maintenance / support
- We are interested in an ongoing package to update the site, maintain security and fix any new bugs.
- Training
- We would like to book in half a day of training
- Ongoing communication
- We expect regular email communication and a weekly stand up meeting to go through progress.
Replying to Spec
Our choice criteria
- Understanding of the project
- Proven expertise in retail website development and e-commerce
- Familiarity with the UK retail sector
- Extensive and current experience in providing web hosting and support services
- Extensive and current experience in working effectively with small and medium sized retail businesses
- Effective project and business planning skills as demonstrated by a realistic and viable initial outline budget for the project
Case Studies
- Please include background material to demonstrate the previous experience and range of work of the consultant(s) and of the specific personnel proposed for the work. This can include descriptions and examples of previous relevant work in the form of case studies.
Please provide a breakdown of the days work involved and your day rate