Website Requirements Document: Why the Downloadable Template Does Not Help

When people search for a website requirements document, many add template, example, pdf or word. It makes sense: you want a document to fill in. It is also exactly what produces useless requirements documents.

A template gives you the structure of a document. It does not give you the decisions, and a requirements document is nothing more than a list of decisions already made. Filled in without them, it produces quotes you cannot compare, because each provider fills the gaps their own way.

The test that tells you whether yours is any use

Give it to two providers without talking to them. If they come back with two very different prices, the document has not done its job: it left room for two different projects. A good requirements document narrows the quotes. It does not make them identical, but it makes the gaps between them explainable.

The six decisions nobody else can make for you

1. What the visitor must do. Not "present the company", but the precise action: call, request a quote, book, buy. A site with no expected action cannot be judged a success or a failure.

2. Who writes the copy. It is the first source of difference between two quotes, and the first cause of delay. Decide it before, not during.

3. Who updates the site, and how often. A site changed once a year and a site changed every week are not built the same way. Name the person, not the department.

4. What must exist on day one, and what can wait. Two separate lists. Putting everything in the first one multiplies the budget without speeding anything up.

5. What the site must connect to. Point of sale, calendar, invoicing tool, CRM. An integration discovered halfway through is what makes a project drift.

6. Who decides. One person able to settle between two options within twenty-four hours. It is the most decisive point, and the one that appears least often in a requirements document.

What you should not put in it

The technology. Writing "WordPress site" before describing the need means picking the answer before the question. Let the provider propose, and judge how they justify it.

A number of pages. It says nothing about the real work. Five pages with a booking flow cost more than thirty pages of content.

Two pages are enough

A useful requirements document fits on two pages: the six decisions above, the list of what already exists (copy, photos, accounts, data), and a date. The rest is filler, and filler is exactly what a downloaded template encourages you to produce.

Building an app rather than a website? The decisions are not the same, and the app stores add their own rules: see our mobile app requirements document in nine decisions. And once the document is ready, our guide to custom web application development cost gives the ranges to expect.