Website Development Requirements Document
This is a practical guide to building a requirements document for a website development project — the documented needs the solution must meet, adapted to the realities of designing and building a new website.
What a Requirements Document is
A requirements document is the documented needs the solution must meet. For the full concept and how it works in general, see Requirements Document. On a website development project it plays the same role, tuned to this kind of work.
Why it matters for a Website Development project
Website Development projects live or die on designing and building a new website. A well-built requirements document gives the team a shared, explicit reference for exactly that — reducing ambiguity, aligning stakeholders, and making problems visible early enough to act. Skipping it, or doing it generically, is how website development projects drift into avoidable delay and cost.
What to include
- Business requirements
- Functional requirements
- Non-functional requirements
- Acceptance criteria
- Traceability
Website Development-specific considerations
Tailor the requirements document to the risks that most often derail website development projects:
- Scope creep from stakeholder requests
- Content readiness delays
- Browser/device compatibility
Example
On a real website development project, the requirements document would be shaped by designing and building a new website. In particular, it should explicitly account for the project’s biggest risks — scope creep from stakeholder requests, content readiness delays, browser/device compatibility — rather than treating them as afterthoughts.