The good website requirements specification

Get it right from the start and have an easy and manageable process when you need a new website. In this blog post, we'll discuss the difference between the traditional approach and Growth Driven Design, what questions you should ask yourself and your organization, and what requirements and expectations should be in place before the work begins.

medarbejderbillede-2024-Jan_endelig
CCO & Associate Partner
January 21, 2021

In our digitalized world, a company website should be a fine-tuned growth engine that can act as an effective focal point for business-critical strategies, functions and future growth. However, we also know that it can be difficult to dedicate the time and resources to a redesign in a busy schedule. In this blog post, we’ll discuss the difference between the traditional approach and Growth Driven Design, what questions you should ask yourself and your organization, and what requirements and expectations should be in place before the work begins.

All to equip you to get it right from the start – and to make the process as easy and manageable as possible.

Growth Driven Design vs. Traditional Web Development

For many, the decision to change websites can seem monumental and overwhelming – especially since a lot of resources have to be dedicated to both preparation and development over an extended period of time in an already busy schedule.

And all such processes tend to grow further along the way, as there are typically many different inputs that need to be considered – whether they add real value or not.

The traditional approach is akin to constructing a large, complex building and powering it based on a series of assumptions that everything will work as intended and that nothing will be superfluous. This rarely happens in the real world.

Growth Driven Design, on the other hand, is a development philosophy where we actually build the building from the bottom up instead of the other way around. It provides – excuse the pun – a much better foundation as the site’s content, functionalities etc. are added based on user needs and behavior on the site. It also provides a website that can be developed, adapted and optimized continuously as the company grows.

And you don’t have to tear the house down periodically to build a new one, as agility ensures that you can simply expand as your needs – and growth – evolve based on your customers’ digital behavior.

In addition, the development time will often be significantly shorter when using Growth Driven Design. You can read more about Growth driven design in our blogpost on the topic.

5 questions you should always ask yourself

The first and most common question we get asked is; “When can it go live and what will it cost?” These are valid questions, of course, but the most important questions are the ones you need to ask yourself and the part of your organization that is involved in the process and decision to switch websites.

The more questions that are clarified before the process starts, the less roadblocks there will be between the decision and the final result.

Some of these questions could be, for example:

  • What is the overall purpose of the new site – to inform, generate leads, sell products or something else entirely?
  • Does your current site match the company’s strategy or does it need to be rethought in relation to it?
  • Should the site act as a content base to drive traffic via Inbound Marketing/Marketing Automation – for example through newsletters, blogs and social media?
  • Should there (still) be a CRM system for sales and customer information? And do you use it actively in your marketing?
  • Will/can you reuse existing content, design and functionalities or do you need to rethink everything?

That’s just a small selection, in fact, we’ve collected almost 100 questions that should be considered. And while you don’t have to answer them all, each one of them “raises the ball” for some valuable reflection and internal discussions about the future role of the website.

You can find all of these questions right here – and possibly use them to clarify your initial considerations.

Once most of the relevant questions have been answered and there is consensus on the basic ambitions for the new site, you can go a little deeper by formulating a requirements specification for the design and development of your new website.

The requirements specification covers the desired functions, target audience, KPIs and more, enabling you to specify the general requirements and expectations that your company or organization has for a new website.

This applies whether you want a solution based on Growth Driven Design or the more traditional approach.

The requirements specification will also make it easier to obtain comparable offers from different suppliers – although of course we hope you choose us.

You are of course also welcome to contact us for a non-binding conversation or a free check of your existing site.

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Please call, so we can have a talk about how we can help you.

CCO & Associate Partner

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