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How to create a new website spec document

The very first step to creating a website is outlining all of the key objectives you your website needs to meet. We teach you how to identify them.
Mar 13, 2020 • 7 minute read
Updated on Mar 15, 2020 by Closed User
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Identifying the goals and objectives of your new website

A website is not solely a static resource for your business, its functions should align with your business's unique goals and objectives. Before launching your website project, you need to first identify all of the key requirements of your business to ensure your website is intentionally designed to meet these requirements
In this guide we will teach you how create our website specifications document by showing you how to identify your high level objectives and then all of the aesthetic and technical required to meet these objectives. 

High level objectives 

Increasing sales 
That's an obvious objective right? It actually isn't that simple, each business has unique sales requirements, depending on what they're selling. 
If you're not sure how to categorize your offering, here are some examples of popular online sales solutions.
Will you be selling a variety of physical / digital products? Some examples are:
Dropshipping
Software
Online courses
Will you be selling a service?
Some examples are:
Consultations
Coaching
Digital agency
Engineering services
Will you be selling a single product? Some examples are:
An ebook
Single product promotion 
If your sales offering falls into any of the above categories, increase sales would be the best objective for your website.  
Increased exposure / awareness
Perhaps your primary objective isn't sales, but to increase exposure. Some examples of websites in this category include:
Blogging websites
Business websites that offer more information about their services
Entertainment websites (such as the onion)
Media websites (news and reporting)
Build a lead list
Rather than pressuring visitors to instantly make a purchase you might decide to put them through a nurturing journey to dispel any of their reservations. This is especially ideal for highly complex offerings that require their leads to meet a specific set of qualifications.
A business with a lead building objective may only need a landing page website. The downside to a landing page website is that it can only be used for a single sales campaign and you need to purchase a domain and hosting package for every different landing page you create.
The most cost effective option is to create lead capture landing pages as separate pages to your primary website. That will allow you to create as many landing pages as you like without paying extra for seperate domains or hosting.
When choosing the primary objective of your website, you are not limited to just one of the above options. Your goal could be to build a lead list and increase sales, or possibly even all three.
The purpose of identifying your primary objectives is to make the next step easier for you. We will now be stepping down to a more granular level to determine the aesthetic and technical specifications of your primary objectives. 

Technical and aesthetic requirements for all websites

Before delving into the specifics of each objective, there are some technical requirements that could benefit all website categories. They are outlined below:

CRM 

A CRM is a database of all of the contact information submitted on your website. A CRM integrated into your website will save you from the arduous tasks of manually inputting all of the details of your contacts and leads into your CRM.
There are off the shelf solutions you can use, but if you would like more control of your data and CRM functions, a custom CRM solution is a better option.
The other major benefit of having an integrated CRM is that it can help you execute high efficient sales campaigns. 
You can send separate sales campaigns to specific audience segments based on their historical behavior. This will allow you to tailor your sales efforts around the unique triggers each audience segment is most likely to respond to, thereby increasing the likelihood of conversions.

Email marketing software

Even if building up a leads list is not your primary objective, you should still establish a means of building a subscriber list. 
If visitors perceive you as an authority in your niche, they will be open to receiving further communications from you. With a growing subscriber list you can implement a highly effective content marketing strategy and increase your revenue.
You never know how popular your website will get and you should make the most of every visitor. Whether it's via direct sales, or through indirect methods like content marketing, you can make money from anyone.
Email marketing software automatically stores all of your subscribers into a database. The software also allows you to craft beautiful email campaigns using a simplistic drag and drop builder. 

UX optimized user journey

The is an absolutely necessary aesthetic requirement for all website objectives. All of your visitors need to have a pleasant experience when navigating your website. Your primary objective needs to be very clear to them and there should be minimal steps to reaching that objective.
A UX optimised website is also one of the primary SEO metrics, so it greatly affects the Google rank of your website. 
Mapping a UX optimized design is dependent on many factors such as the unique mindset and behaviors of your target audience and even the time of day they are most likely to visit your website.
To help you craft a UX optimized visitor journey that's tailored to your unique business, it's best to work alongside a UX specialist

Technical and design requirements for sales objective websites

The following functions will help you increase conversions and meet your sales objectives:

Pop up form 

A pop up form could provide a discount to incentify sales. You can even set your pop up form to activate when visitors are about to exit your page. This is an opportunity for you to offer a delicious incentive for them to stay, like a free gift or free shipping.

Reduce number of choices

This is a design requirement. When visitors are faced with too many choices they get overwhelmed and leave. Your visitors should have no question about the specific conversion action you would like them to take. A good rule of thumb is to only provide one conversion option, so be frugal with your Call to Action buttons.
web visitor response time verse number of options
Source: crazyegg.com

Install chatbots 

Chatbots speak to your visitors on your behalf, you can even program them to upsell certain solutions and answer visitors enquiries while you sleep! Chatbots allow you to distance yourself from the disturbance of customer enquiries so that you can focus on more important tasks.
If, however, you prefer to have complete control over all communications you can integration a web chat solution that allows you to chat with our visitors straight from your phone. 

Use color and contrast 

Color and contrasting techniques can highlight your intended course of action and also give your sales pitch greater impact. Here is an example:
color and contrasting techniques to increase conversions
Source: crazyegg.com
As you can see, the most impactful portion of each sentence is highlighted in a bright pink color that is amplified by the contrasting dark background. The call to action button is also the same color to minimise diversity and confusion.

Animate call to action button

If you really want to meet and exceed your sales objections, you should consider animating your CTA buttons. An animation is nothing too extreme, just a subtle shake from side to side to catch the eye of your visitors. 
Some web platforms have special plugins for this you can install, otherwise you can engineer your own customized solution

Technical and design requirements for increasing exposure / awareness

An awareness objective website does not require as much visitor action promoting as a sales objective website. The main requirement is to make it easy for visitors to access all of the information they might need. This means categorising all of your content logically.
To encourage continued reading, consider implementing a "you might also enjoy reading.." blade at the end of each article to showcase related posts. Rather than manually selecting each related article by hand you should engineer an automated solution. You'll be very happy you did once you start ramping up your publishing activity.
Here is an example:
suggested articles blade for continued reading
Source: Freelancer.com

Make your website optimized for reading

Sales websites are designed to push leads through the conversion window as quickly as possible, exposure websites should be optimized for entertainment and prolonged reading. 
Make sure you include a lot of white space between elements to minimise distractions from your text. Use pictures, videos and graphics to help visitors absorb your content and give them a pleasing reading experience.

Create a membership site

Most entertainment websites offer visitors membership options. This allows them to personalise the content each user sees in their feed based on their set preferences.
You can even make money from this feature by offering premium content to paying members. 
A completely customized membership solution is best to give you complete control over the design and scalability of your membership website, so best to steer clear from rigid off the shelve membership software and get a developer to create one for you.  

Encourage sharing 

The best way to multiply the exposure of your website is to encourage users to share its content. There is a two step method to achieving this:
Step 1: Write incredible content visitors will be compelled to share
Step 2: Make sharing content super easy
Include an option to share all of your posts on popular social channels. An effective engagement trick is to give users the option of tweeting specific sections of content.
Another great idea that requires some customized engineering, is to give the reader the option of sharing each article they've read with any 3 friends. 

Technical and design requirements for a lead generation website

The requirements of a lead generation website are similar to that of sales objective websites, the aim is to funnel visitors through your conversion window as quickly as possible. 
The same technical and design requirements for sales objective websites can therefore be applied to lead generation websites.

Choosing a website category

This final step is straightforward once you have all of your primary and technical objectives outlined.
If you are selling a variety of physical and / or digital products, an ecommerce website is a good choice for you. An ecommerce website integrates a payment gateway to accept payments securely from customers.
If you are selling online courses or an online service, you will need a membership website to gate your premium content.  Membership websites are also ideal for entertainment websites that want to give visitors a personalised experience.
Lead generation landing pages can be extensions of generic informational websites. 
If you are not sure which category of website is best for you, you can speak to a Technical Co-Pilot about your requirements. 

Final thoughts

Taking the time to outline all of the objectives and requirements of your website will ensure your new website is specifically created to meet and exceed your business goals.
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