Aims and Objectives
The Aims and Objectives section should explain what you hope to achieve by building a website. Is the site to act as a ’shop window’ for your business, e-commerce, or will it be more of a resource for information about your company?

Will you be collecting money, if so do you accept credit cards, etc?

Use this section to give us an insight into the type of website you need.

Audience
The intended audience for your website can make a huge difference to the way it looks, feels and works. It is essential to take the time to identify audiences clearly in the design brief. Please resist the temptation to say ‘everyone’, as this will lead to a website that satisfies nobody’s requirements.

Design Specification
The Design Specification covers how your web pages will appear on the screen – it covers everything from layout to colour. Web designers will generally interpret a Design Specification quite literally, so it is important to be as clear as possible.

Specific points to consider include:

Does your business have branding guidelines?  If so, what elements should be reflected in the website design (font-face, colours, logo and branding etc)?

How will the design appeal to your audiences? This will govern how much text you want to see on a page, how you use pictures and whether you design pages specifically for a certain audience.

Functionality Specification
The Functionality Specification covers how your website will work. This includes the way people will navigate through your pages and the actions performed by any buttons or effects you want to include on the site.

It is a good idea to draw up a draft site structure as part of this section. You can do this as a basic flow-chart with boxes for pages and lines representing the links between them. This will highlight any areas that may cause additional cost and delay later in the process.

Always ensure that your Functionality Specification includes the following:

• Navigation
• Media requirements (just text and pictures or animation, virtual reality and sound?)
• Interactive elements (e.g. ‘Print this Page’ or ‘Email this Page to a Friend’)
• Will the site consist of ’static’ web pages or be assembled from a database?

Also consider how you will view the site as it progresses.  We are able to host a ‘live’ version to which you have access over the Internet so that you can see how it is developing and provide essential feedback before it is accessible by the general public.

Accessibility Specification
The Accessibility Specification gives us precise instructions on ensuring that your website is accessible to the widest possible audience and meets accessibility guidelines and legislation.

Deliverables
The Deliverables for a project specify exactly what we must provide by the end of the contract period. These will usually include:

• Documentation – a list of the pages along with a map of how they fit together
• Clear information on how your business will manage the site
• The website itself – usually a series of HTML pages

Budget
The Budget for your website will be a key factor in the website you receive. It is particularly important to remember that you may be charged for any changes you make to the design along the way.

It is to your advantage to provide as much information in the brief as possible to avoid incurring these additional costs. Also, interactive elements on your pages will be expensive and you should always consider whether they add significantly to the user’s experience. If not, leave them out.

Timetable
Always ensure that the timetable for developing your site includes ample time for checking and evaluation prior to launch.

Also, establish clear milestones for delivery within the project, including dates for initial concepts, completion of functionality and sign-off of design.

It is important to establish clear lines of communication from the outset of the project. Make sure there is a single point of contact in your company and with our development team, and that all project-related information is passed through these two people.

And Finally…
dbd will be happy to work with you, as required, during this development process. We recognise that writing a website brief can be a daunting task but we are here to help you, in any way we can, through this important phase of your website creation.

We have compiled the following Jargon Buster to help you understand what the hell we are talking about!

If you think we have left something out, add a comment to this post and we will get straight back to you.

Banner Ad – is (usually) a rectangular advertisement on a website above or to the side of a website’s main content.  It will usually have a link through to the advertiser’s own site.

Blog – Short for Web Log is a web page in the style of a personal diary/commentary by the author that is usually updated on a very regular basis.  It can be accessed by anyone and often allows visitors to the site to post comments.

CMS – Short for Content Management System is the software that enables the user to manage their website content, such as adding news items or uploading images etc.

Data Capture - Collecting data (name, email address etc) from your customers / clients. Useful for e-marketing purposes.

Domains – A domain name is used in a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) to identify specific websites.

E-Commerce – Short for Electronic Commerce it is business that is carried out over the internet, but more specifically relates to buying/selling – shopping carts/online purchasing.

Flash – (Adobe Flash) is the description of the technology that allows web developers to incorporate animation and interactive content into their websites.

Hosting – A web hosting is a service that enables individuals/companies to have their websites online and accessible to all via the world wide web.  You can lease space on a web host company’s server but still have your own domain name, this is a less expensive way of doing things.

HTML – Short for Hyper Text Mark-up Language is the name of the language used to create Web documents.  It defines the page layout, fonts and graphics etc.

HTML Emails – is the use of HTML (see above) in emails to provide more possibilities for use than just text ie diagrams, tables, graphs etc.  They are used in email marketing campaigns and email newsletters etc.

Javascript – Is the name of the programming language that enables web designers to design interactive features into their websites.

Keywords – These are words used by the search engines to find the most relevant websites.

Online Advertising – uses the internet to deliver marketing messages to attract potential customers, including the use of Banner Ads (see above), social network and email marketing etc.

PHP – Short for PHP: Hypertext Pre-processor is also a language that enables web designers to create dynamic content that interacts with databases.

PPC – Short for Pay Per Click is an online marketing strategy in which the advertiser pays the search engines a certain amount for every click received on their site.

Rich Media – This is a description of media that allows for active participation by the recipient or interactivity usually incorporating audio, video and high resolution graphics.

RSS – Short for Really Simple Syndication is a web-feed format specifically used to publish frequently updated websites, such as news, blogs, audio etc.

SEO – Short for Search Engine Optimisation it is the process of increasing the number of visitors to a website by ensuring it appears high in the search results of Google (and other search engines).  It gives a website a “web presence”.  Websites can be built to be “search engine friendly”.  These search results are known as organic results.

SSL – Short for Secure Sockets Layer is the procedure that enables you to send secure/private documents/data via the internet – sites have it when privacy/security is essential for example when credit card information is involved.