How To Prepare A Briefing For Your Web Project?

“As a client, you are not obliged to know the technology involved in the development of a Web page, that is why it is difficult for you to elaborate a more technical document.”

The lack of communication has great repercussions in a web page project, in money, time and energy of the whole team.

Transmitting ideas is always more difficult than it seems, although you have been talking for years, it is still difficult for other people to understand what your desires are. The biggest problem with communication is that people assume that the other can read their mind, something impossible.

Remember, the lack of communication has great repercussions, not only in money that you have to invest to solve the errors that originate along the way, but in the time that the whole process takes; the lack of communication that delays a project, can even reduce the desire to move on, you can give up and you know it.

Now that the importance of a Web briefing has established, you will see what information it should contain, but not before talking a little about the benefits.

How to prepare a briefing for your Web project?

Who benefits from the briefing?

When starting out, you should ask yourself these questions: “Who do I focus on, the developer or the client? Who should have the initiative of the briefing? ” The answer is very simple; everyone is interested and benefit from having a briefing, so, whether you are a developer or a client, you should encourage the creation of this document.

Why? It is also simple because with this document there is a record of what is expected from the project and it is much easier to measure the results. Briefing helps to clarify and organize the ideas, which is very useful for you to know what you are really looking for with the project of the Web page.

One of the limitations that can occur when you do this document is that you know what you want at the end, but do not understand anything about the process.

I do not know how, but I want my project to end up being “like that”

As a client you are not obliged to know the technology involved in the development of a Web page, that is why it is difficult for you to elaborate a more technical document. That is why the conclusion of this activity depends on the collaboration of the parties; As a customer, you know as specific as possible and the developer will guide you in the most technical parts; there lies the utility of the communication.

Essential parts of any briefing for Web development

A briefing can include hundreds of things, including previous designs of how the website should look, but as I said, it will depend on the experience you have in these projects and the clearness of your ideas.

Do not worry before time, follow these premises and you’ll see how ideas are flowing; In the end, the briefing will be a robust document that will greatly facilitate the development of your website.

Who you are?

Why is it important for the developer to know who you are? Well, I’m not talking, necessarily, that you describe yourself as a person, rather I mean the description of the company.

Every business, company, or whatever you want to call it, has its own personality, which should be reflected in the final result of the website.

Although the site is developed based on the expectations of customers, it must represent the way you want to sell your business idea.

Without briefing, you can have a nice and functional website, but surely very generic.

What do you offer?

Depending on what you sell, if you sell something, the website is going to look one way or another. In fact, depending on what you sell, or the objectives of your site, the functionalities of it are defined. An online sales site does not have the same design as a blog that seeks to monetize with advertising.

Who are you offering it to?

Defining your target has never been more important than this moment! It depends on the audience of your business, and your website, the design approach and the functionality to tend to a particular style.

To name one, it is not the same, to sell to men as to women, it is not the same to attack younger audiences than to more mature audiences, among other things.

From the definition of your target audience important parameters are set in design and functionality, even, the same functionality may vary according to the audience; you must remember that not all audiences have the same skills and knowledge for browsing the Internet.

What is the differential character of your offer?

For example, if your product differs from the rest because it is ecological, very likely, that will impact the final design, because it is a value that must prevail on the site to make your offer more attractive.

Website features

Here begins the most technical part of the document and the one that helps make a difference with the rest of the websites. As I said in the previous point, although there are features that you have seen in pages of your competence, and that you think you can add, there will be some others that are not included and that can be useful for the user’s experience.

To define functionalities, it must be clear what your target market is looking for in a Web site. For example, in virtual store-type sites, the functionalities associated with shipping methods, gift cards, wrappers, advanced product search engines, even pre-orders, can be very useful to improve the user experience.

How does your Web project fit into your marketing plans?

Remember that your website is part of a whole that must be in harmony. Your website can not give a different image to what you do in offline marketing or in other spaces on the Internet.

Look at a global scenario where all the pieces fit, that will help you define what you want and expect from your website at the marketing level. Remember, with this project you hope to generate money, and for that, everything must be ready to attract potential customers or consumers.

Technical and maintenance considerations

Although, you are not an expert in Web development, as a client, you can define certain characteristics regarding the administration of the site and its maintenance. This depends only on you.

If you are a person who is willing to manage your website and have knowledge of the activities to develop, you are likely to be more flexible with the usability of the administration panel. If you do not have that much time, you want the panel to be simpler or someone else to manage for you.

The maintenance of a Web site depends on the complexity of it, it is not the same blog as a virtual store that can have hundreds of variations in a month, for example.

Preferably, you must define how simple you want your site to be with respect to administration and maintenance, otherwise, you will have a project that you will not be able to manage.

Make it more personal! That the parties involved talk

The briefings are not documents that are created and are not discussed. Remember, human character is vital for the parties to understand each other. The best thing is to develop the document and then talk about it so that you are sure that everything has been understood.

Nor is it a conversation at the beginning and ready, rather it is constant communication during the development to detect and eliminate possible failures that are presented.