The Ultimate Guide To Writing A Website Brief

Creating a website brief is essential in the website development process. It is a document that outlines your website's necessary information, including its goals, target audience, content strategy, technical requirements, and design. In this article, we will discuss a website brief, why it's important to have one, common mistakes to avoid when writing it, and how to create a website brief for your website. Also, we will understand how Strikingly can help with a website brief.

What Is A Website Brief?

A website brief is a document that outlines the details of your website project. It includes information about your brand, target audience, objectives, content strategy, design preferences, technical requirements, and budget. A well-written website brief serves as a roadmap for your entire project and helps ensure everyone involved is on the same page.

Importance Of Having A Website Brief

A clear and concise website brief helps avoid misunderstandings with stakeholders or team members during development. It also helps you stay focused on your goals and ensures that all aspects of your site are aligned with them.

Common Mistakes To Avoid When Writing Your Website Brief

Some common mistakes to avoid when writing your website brief include being too vague or too detailed in certain areas; not considering the needs of your target audience; not setting clear objectives or timelines; and failing to communicate effectively with stakeholders or team members.

Continue reading to the next section, where we discuss how to write a website brief and how Strikingly can be of help.

1. Understanding Your Target Audience

A website brief is a document that outlines the goals, objectives, and requirements for a website. It serves as a roadmap for the website development process, ensuring all stakeholders are on the same page and clearly understand what needs to be accomplished. The section will discuss understanding your target audience when writing your website brief.

Identifying The Audience Demographics

Knowing your target audience's demographics is the first step. Age, gender, income, education, and geography are some examples of this data. Knowing these details about your audience allows you to tailor your website content to their specific needs and preferences.

Understanding Audience Needs And Preferences

Once you have identified your audience demographics, it's essential to understand their needs and preferences. What are they looking for when they visit your website? What do they want to accomplish? What are their pain points? Answering these questions can help you create content that speaks directly to your audience and provides them with value.

Developing A User Persona

Based on data and research on actual users of your website or product, user personas are fictitious depictions of your ideal client. It helps you understand who your users are and what motivates them. When developing a user persona, consider age, gender, occupation, interests, goals, challenges, and preferred communication channels.

Using Strikingly's Audience Analytics

Strikingly's audience analytics tool provides valuable insights into who visits your website and how they interact with it. You can use this data to refine your user personas and tailor your content even further to meet the needs of your target audience.

Image taken from Strikingly

2. Website Objectives

Clearly defining your website goals and objectives is crucial when writing your website brief. It will help you stay focused on what you want to achieve with your website and ensure everyone involved in the development process is on the same page.

Defining Website Goals And Objectives

Your website goals should align with your business objectives. For instance, if you are a small business owner looking to increase sales, your website goal may be generating more leads or selling products online.

On the other hand, if you are a blogger or content creator, your goal may be to increase traffic and engagement on your site. Whatever your objective is, make sure it is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).

Outlining Desired Website Functionality

Once you have defined your website goals and objectives, the next step is to outline the desired functionality of your site. It includes contact forms, e-commerce capabilities, social media integration, and other functionality to help you achieve your goals. Please list all the features you want on your site and prioritize them based on their importance in achieving your goals.

Establishing A Budget And Timeline

Establishing a budget and timeline for your project is critical when writing a website brief. You need to know how much money you can allocate for the project and how long it will take.

Be realistic about both factors so that you don't end up overspending or having unrealistic expectations for completion time.

Utilizing Strikingly's Website Templates

One of the benefits of using Strikingly for creating websites is access to their wide range of templates. These templates are customizable based on individual needs but provide an excellent starting point for those who may not know where to begin. Using Strikingly's templates can save time designing websites while ensuring the site is unique and visually appealing.

Defining your website goals and objectives, outlining desired functionality, establishing a budget and timeline, and utilizing Strikingly's website templates are all essential to writing an effective website brief. Following these steps can ensure the success of your website development project and that it meets your business needs.

Image taken from Strikingly

3. Content Strategy

When it comes to website development, content is king. A well-written website brief should include a clear content strategy that defines the tone and voice of the website, maps out the website content structure, and establishes the SEO strategy. Here's how to tackle each of these elements.

Defining The Tone And Voice Of The Website

The tone and voice of your website should reflect your brand's personality and values while also resonating with your target audience. Consider what kind of language will appeal to them - formal or casual? Playful or serious? Use bullet points to define specific characteristics that will guide your writing.

Mapping Out The Website Content Structure

Mapping out a clear content structure ensures visitors can easily navigate your site and find what they want. Start by creating a sitemap that outlines all the pages you want to include on your site, then organize them into logical categories based on their purpose.

Establishing The Website's SEO Strategy

Your website's SEO strategy should be integrated into every aspect of its development, from keyword research to on-page optimization. Identify relevant keywords that align with your brand and target audience, then use them strategically throughout your site - in page titles, meta descriptions, headers, and body copy.

Strikingly's Content Editor And SEO Tools

Strikingly offers a powerful content editor that makes it easy to create engaging web copy without any coding knowledge required. Strikingly's built-in SEO tools also help you optimize every aspect of your site for search engines - from page titles to alt tags. Following these guidelines for creating a comprehensive content strategy within your website brief can help you be well on your way to creating a website that engages and converts visitors.

Image taken from Strikingly

4. Design And User Experience

Design and user experience are crucial elements of an effective website. A clean and compelling design makes a good first impression, while a seamless user experience engages visitors. When done well, web design and UX deliver an easy and enjoyable journey through your site. Users can quickly find what they need, accomplish their goals with minimal friction, and gain a positive perception of your brand. Good design and user experience turn casual web visitors into loyal customers and brand advocates. Here's how to define them:

Establishing The Website's Visual Identity

When it comes to establishing a website's visual identity, it is important to consider your brand's personality and values. It includes choosing the right color scheme, typography, and imagery that aligns with your brand's messaging. Your website should have a consistent look and feel across all pages to create a cohesive user experience.

Choosing The Right Website Layout And Design Features

Choosing the right layout and design features for your website can greatly impact its effectiveness in engaging visitors. When selecting these elements, it is important to consider factors such as ease of navigation, readability, and visual hierarchy. Strikingly offers a variety of customizable templates that can help you achieve a professional-looking design without having to start from scratch.

Ensuring Website Responsiveness And Accessibility

In today's mobile-first world, websites must be responsive across all devices to ensure optimal user experience. Additionally, ensuring accessibility for users with disabilities is not only ethically responsible but also legally required in many countries. Strikingly offers responsive design options and accessibility features such as image alt tags.

Strikingly's Design Customization Options

Strikingly offers various customization options for your template, including font selection, color schemes, background images, and more. You can also add custom CSS code if you have specific design needs beyond what their editor provides.

Image taken from Strikingly

5. Technical Requirements

When writing your website brief, it's important to outline the technical requirements and integrations needed for your website to function properly. It includes any third-party tools or software that need to be integrated into the site, such as payment gateways or customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

Outlining Technical Requirements And Integrations

To ensure a smooth development process, it's essential to provide a detailed list of all technical requirements and integrations required for your website. It can include:

• Third-party software integrations
• Payment gateway integration
• E-commerce functionality
• Database integration
• Social media integration
• Custom forms or applications
  

You can avoid delays or unexpected costs during development by outlining these technical requirements upfront.

Ensuring Website Security And Scalability

Website security and scalability are critical components of any successful website. When writing your website brief, it's important to consider the following:

• Security measures such as SSL certificates, firewalls, and malware protection.
• Scalability options include cloud hosting or content delivery networks (CDNs).

Ensuring your website is secure and scalable will protect your business from potential threats and ensure it can handle increased traffic as it grows.

Establishing Website Hosting And Domain Needs

Another crucial aspect of the technical requirements is establishing your website's hosting and domain needs. It includes:

• Choosing a reliable hosting provider with adequate bandwidth and storage space.
• Selecting a domain name that is easy to remember and relevant to your brand.
  

You can ensure that your site is up and running smoothly from day one by taking the time to research different hosting providers and domain options.

Strikingly's Technical Support And Integrations

Suppose you're using Strikingly to build your website. In that case, you'll have access to their expert technical support team, who can assist with any questions or issues during development. Strikingly also offers a range of integrations with third-party tools and software, making it easy to add new features and functionality to your site as needed.

Image taken from Strikingly

6. Reviewing And Refining The Brief

Once you have completed your website brief, reviewing and refining it before moving forward with the development process is important. The stage involves collaborating with stakeholders and team members to ensure everyone is on the same page and that the brief is complete, accurate, and effective.

Collaborating With Stakeholders And Team Members

Collaboration is key when it comes to reviewing and refining your website brief. It would help if you involved all relevant stakeholders, including designers, developers, content creators, and project managers, to ensure that everyone understands the project's goals. Ensure that everyone clearly understands what needs to be done and how it will be accomplished by getting everyone involved.

Reviewing The Website Brief For Completeness

When reviewing your website brief for completeness, you should ensure all necessary information has been included. It includes details about your target audience, website objectives, content strategy, design elements, technical requirements, budget, timeline, and more. You should also check for any inconsistencies or errors in the document.

Identifying Areas That Need Improvement Or Revision

During this stage of the process, you should identify any areas of your website brief that need improvement or revision. It may include adding more detail to certain sections or clarifying certain points to make them easier to understand. It's important to address these issues early on in the process so that they don't cause problems later on.

Strikingly's Project Management And Collaboration Tools

Strikingly offers a range of project management and collaboration tools that can help you streamline this process. These tools allow you to easily share your website brief with team members and collaborate on real-time changes. You can also track progress throughout the development process to ensure everything stays on track.

Image taken from Strikingly

How Can Strikingly Help You With A Website Brief?

Are you tired of struggling with website briefs that never seem to hit the mark? Well, fear not, my friend! There is a solution for all your woes - and it comes in the form of an easy-to-use platform called Strikingly.

Striking is perfect if you're looking for something simple yet effective. Its user-friendly interface makes creating websites as effortless as pie (and who doesn't love pie?). Plus, its drag-and-drop feature allows even those without technical expertise to create stunning designs!

But wait, there's more! Not only does this powerful tool help make building sites easier, but it also helps streamline communication between clients & designers by providing detailed templates outlining every aspect, from design layouts down through content requirements or specifications needed before starting work on each project- ensuring everyone knows what they're getting into right off-the-bat. Hence, no surprises arise later during the development stages when deadlines loom large overhead like dark clouds threatening rainstorms upon our heads.

Why waste time dealing with complicated processes while trying desperately hard just to get everything done correctly within tight timelines – instead, let us do some heavy lifting using Strikingly today because we know how important first impressions can be online nowadays, where competition has become more fierce than ever before!!

Conclusion

Creating a website brief is essential to achieving a successful website. A well-written website brief provides a clear roadmap for the entire web development process and ensures all stakeholders are on the same page. It saves time and resources by ensuring everyone involved in the project understands the vision and objectives clearly. A well-written website brief also helps avoid misunderstandings or miscommunications that can lead to costly mistakes during development. In this article, we have explored how to write a website brief and the benefits of using Strikingly for website development.

Strikingly makes it easy for anyone to create a professional-looking website without any coding skills required. With its user-friendly interface, customizable templates, SEO tools, analytics capabilities, technical support, and collaboration features- Strikingly is an excellent option for businesses or individuals looking to create their websites. If you're ready to create your successful website with Strikingly- start by writing your own comprehensive Website Brief by treating the above article as a website brief template! Following our guide above will have everything you need to create an effective online presence! However, the simple tool and the tips will ensure that you won’t need any help from anyone.