A brief website checklist
- Give us an overview of your organization
- Give us an overview of the problems you are solving
- Tell us about your target audience
- Include an analysis of the competition
- Describe the scope and characteristics of the website
- Describe the responsibilities of the project
- How will you measure success?
- Include legal and technical requirements
- Describe project timeline, key contacts, and agency requirements
Let’s dive into the details.
1. Give us an overview of your organization
Many abstracts forget to include general information about the company or organization. While it’s helpful to include links to any existing online or offline marketing materials, a quick overview of your organization is helpful at the information stage.
Start your summary with information such as:
- When was your organization established? Where do you operate? What are the main products or services you offer?
- Tell us about your DNA. What are you known for? What is your vision and mission? How is it different from your competitors?
- What is the main message you want your website to convey? (If you have an existing content strategy, please include your key message from that strategy here.) Some examples are:
- We are market leaders in [X]
- We offer thought leadership in the areas of [X] and [Y]
- We have a team international [X] of [Y]
- We are technical experts in [X]
- We have extensive experience advising clients on all forms of [X]
2. Give us an overview of the problems you’re solving
Now that we know who you are and what you stand for, it’s time to tell us more about the general business problem you want your website to solve.
If you’re building a new site, we want to know:
- Do you expect the website to generate sales? Create brand awareness? Generate leads?
- What business function will the website support throughout its existence?
If you are revamping an existing site, what are your main goals? reasons for doing so?
- Is the existing site dated? Do you have problems with traffic, adherence or customer retention? Does it need to be updated to reflect an updated brand identity?
- What are the main paint points that users have described on the current website?
- What are its main likes and dislikes on What is your current web presence?
- Are there existing processes (such as billing, invoicing, and content management) that could be simplified or improved?
Pro Tip: This is our complete guide on how to perform a website audit.
These are examples of high-level business goals for a site:
- Help raise the company’s profile in the [X] areas
- Reflect on updated brand messaging from [X]
- Communicate our knowledge and experience in [X]
- Be alongside our competitors but differentiate ourselves in terms of [X]
- Generate [X] number of high-quality monthly leads
- Increase query reach of [X] customer type
- Generate subscriptions
- Increase online sales of products/services
- Attract the best employees
- Build a community of [X]
- Build and strengthen our network of [X]
- Serve as a hub to connect [X] to [Y]
- Consolidate existing content channels in [X]
- Streamline processes (such as online billing)
- Increase efficiency in areas of [X]
3. Tell us about your target audience
To create a website that addresses your goals, we need to know your target audience. Specifically, we would like to know:
- What does your typical customer look like?
- In which sectors and geographies do you operate?
- What are the What are the main problems they are trying to solve when engaging your services?
- Is your audience segmented into specific groups with different needs (eg, clients, potential employees, media and press)?
- What online user activity would you define as “success”?
Examples of “success” could be:
- Purchase a product/subscription
- Sign up for a newsletter
- Contact a member of your team
- Access resources in a knowledge center
- Sign up for events/webinars
- Fill out an inquiry/registration/quote form
4. Include a competitive analysis
Include a list of 5 direct competitors and 5 aspirational competitors. This information is useful for the website strategy phase of the project.
If possible, include a list of likes and dislikes on competitor sites.
5.Outline the Website’s Reach and Features
With a more complete picture of what you do, who your audience is, and what you want to achieve, it’s time to dive into the details of your prospective website. We consider this the ‘meat and potatoes’ of the summary because it is where the technical and creative possibilities are addressed.
Give us a summary (a draft is fine) of the possible navigation structure of your website .
Next, list the main functions that need to be coded. Here is an example overview of potential features:
- User registration and login
- Member management interface
- Restricted resources for members
- Online e-commerce and billing platform
- Blog or news platform
- Online events and reservations
- Center of Knowledge
- Help Desk
- Vacation Portal
- Search Functionality
- Contact Forms or Other Online Forms
- PDF converter
- Interactive map
- Social media integration
- Multilingual platform
Where possible, include a brief description of each feature, with links to online references.
Information is power, so you can never send us too many illustrative examples.
6. Outline the responsibilities of the project
Who is going to do what while we work together on this project? Time to outline project responsibilities:
- Design: Does your company have existing brand guidelines that dictate the proper approach to fonts, colors, and the photograph, or do these need to be compiled as part of the project? Do you have other brand material (brochures, guides) that the site should relate to?
- Content: Will you be writing the content for the website or are you expecting a web agency to provide writing services? Need help editing and proofreading the content?
- Images: Do you have professional photography available for the project or does the project require custom photography services? Do you plan to use stock photos/illustrations in the project?
- Translations: If the site is multilingual, do you need the services of a translation agency or will you provide all translated text?
- Post-Launch Marketing: What are your post-launch marketing plans for the website (eg PPC, social media marketing, email marketing) and do you need help? launch marketing efforts?
- Post-launch content updates: Do you need help managing website content over time, or do you have an internal team that will be responsible for to publish -release content updates to the site?
If you’re still not sure where some of the items are coming from, that’s okay. Let us know what pieces are missing and we can help you get them.
7. How will you measure success?
Imagine: your new website is up and running. It’s fast, easy to use, and feature-rich. But are you solving the problems you articulated at the beginning of your summary? There’s no way to find out without testing.
We’d like to address success metrics at the reporting stage of a project. Here are some examples to consider:
- Google Analytics usage metrics
- Number of subscribers and their use of the site
- Monthly increase in customers leads
- Reach of event registrations
- Reach of newsletter signups
- Ranking of websites against competitors in a post-event customer survey launch
- Customer feedback during project presentations
- Feedback from potential job applicants
- Company press coverage
- Recognition of 3rd party bodies and industry awards
- Cost savings achieved as a result of specific online features
Ideally, the metrics used to measure the success of your site should be “SMART”: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and limited in time.
8. Include legal and technical requirements
It’s almost there! Before you hit submit, please give us an overview of the legal and technical requirements relevant to your region.
Here are some questions to think about:
- Does the site have to meet the accessibility requirements of WCAG or ADA?
- Does it have to Is it compliant with EU cookie rules and GDPR?
- Is there a specific platform I need to link to? Do you have a preferred CMS?
- Do you have a preferred payment gateway when it comes to online billing?
- Do certain site features need to integrate with an existing CRM or accounting? platform?
- Does the site require integration with third-party APIs?
- What are your hosting requirements and do you have an existing hosting provider?
9. Describe the project timeline, key contacts, and vendor requirements
For the final part of your summary, let us know when the project is due, how many people will be involved, and what you’re looking for in a potential agency.
Describe the project schedules:
- What is the due date of the proposal?
- How long will it take to review the proposal and for When will you name an agency?
- What is the target project start date?
- Do you have a target launch date? Should it be divided into specific phases of the project?
Please also tell us about your team:
- How many decision makers will be involved in the project? ?
- Will the project have multiple points of contact or a single project manager in your company?
- Who is the point of contact for questions related to the project brief?
Tell us about your provider’s requirements:
- What do you look for in a web provider?
- What skills and experience do they need to demonstrate ?
- What aspects of the proposal are most important to you?
Send us a copy of your summary
Finally, send us a copy of your website summary and we’ll be happy to respond with a proposal.
Save This Content
If you haven’t already, please download our informative guide below with a sample illustrative summary:
.