The 8 steps to writing an e-commerce website brief - what should you include?

In this article we've distilled the necessary elements that should be included when writing a website brief for your new e-commerce site.

1. Define your objectives

Agencies work best when they know what you want to achieve. This should be the lens through which all decisions are made during the project. This will avoid bad decisions and unnecessary waste.

In this section, explaining a bit about the background of the business will help to build context around your objectives, which could be useful later on.

Try and list two to five objectives that you are trying to achieve. Some common objectives:

• Increase website sales revenue
• Increase conversion rate
• Increase visitor numbers/be higher in Google
• Reduce admin/order fulfilment time and cost

Try and make the objectives measurable and set realistic targets where possible.

2. Key Audiences

Next you need to identify the key audiences that you'd like your website to appeal to. Your objectives will help with determining who you should target.

Once you have your audiences listed, the key thing you need to consider for each is what they need to be able to do easily on your site.

In e-commerce, the goal is going to be complete a sale. This means you aim to convert new visitors and returning customers.

Knowing this will help with:

• Deciding what to promote on your front page
• Writing your about page (aim to reassure here)
• Navigation and search setup
• Choosing checkout features that can reduce abandonment

Also, consider the internal staff that will need to use the site, for example:

• The marketing department need to add new offers to the front page
• Order fulfillment/admin staff need to mark orders as dispatched
• Customer service teams need to be able to find customers and order information
• Copy editors need to update the blog for content marketing
• Management need certain reports

Remember, once a project gets going people only talk about what's missing, not what's already been achieved.

Try and reduce the risk of this by taking all parties' requirements in to account at the start of the project.

3. Competitor analysis

Make a list of your closest competition and consider what elements of their websites are good. Consider borrowing these and giving them your own spin.

This is also a great point to figure out what is unique about you and why you are different. This should be the first thing a visitor learns when they land on your front page.

4. Your unique value proposition

If you have a high bounce rate it's probably because people don't understand why you're so good. Think about why your business is unique.

There's a good post on Shopify here about creating a unique value propisition for your e-commerce store, some examples from that post are:

• What materials is your product is made from?
• Where did those materials came from? Who created them or produced them?
• How are your products manufactured and assembled?
• Who are they manufactured and assembled by?
• What do you have to offer that no one else does?

If you nail this you'll find people exploring your site for longer and more people making purchases.

5. A Word About Budget

Many people don't want to disclose their budget when they contact us.

This is counterproductive. If we know your objectives and your budget, we can come up with the best solution.

If your budget is low, tell us and we will think about what can be done with it.This can mean choosing specific technology that is cheaper to set up, or we can suggest a phased approach where more functionality is added later when you have more budget.

You may also want to consider an Agile approach to development if you can tolerate not getting a fixed price quote. Often the results are better.

Be realistic and keep in mind that if you don't have much budget you'll need to compromise on what you want the site to do.

State the features in the order that are important and divide them in to 'must haves' and 'nice to have'.

Using a platform like Shopify means that a lot of the work is already done, therefore the effort is less and the cost cheaper. The downside is that it's a propreitary system and therefore not as flexible as building from scratch. For a full review of Shopify and comparisons with other e-commerce platforms read our article here.

When we say building from scratch, what we really mean is building a bespoke e-commerce solution on top of an existing base platform like Magento, Drupal Commerce or similar. On these platforms we have direct code access and therefore anything is possible, budget allowing.

However, because the time required to build a bespoke website is a lot more, so is the price. This type of solution may be necessary if you want a lot of third party integration, unusual features or a very unique design.

6. Feature list

This is the place for technical specifications, for examples, what should be included on your product pages? What emails should your customers get?

You may want to include preferences for a CMS or web framework or what payment gateway you want to use.

Often with e-commerce you want to integrate with other systems such as those that help with order management or special offer promotion. If this is the case, include API documentation from each of the suppliers and a summary of what you want the integration to achieve.

This is also a good time to consider what are called non-functional requirements - these are requirements related to usability, legal (compliance such as PCI DSS), security and performance. It's been shown that faster loading sites make more sales - conversion rates can drop by 7% per second loading time.

Include a short bullet point list of what feature requirements you have, this is extremely important in determining the effort required in the build stage of your site and means we can give a more accurate quote.

7. Wireframes, look and feel

This is optional, but sometimes useful. In this section you should try and convey a prototype of what you want to achieve.

• Rough wireframes and sketches showing what you imagine your site to look like can be useful here.
• Showing behaviour (e.g. of dropdowns) may also be helpful.
• A suggested site structure may be obvious from these wireframes, otherwise you should include a basic idea of what content you think your site needs and how it will be divided.
• It's often helpful to include a list of sites you like and don't like, this will save time during the design stage.

Really, this is what you are paying the agency to come up with, so don't worry too much about it. The last point is the most important, though if you have an elaborate idea now is the time to expain it.

8. Timescales

This takes us on to the next must have - timescales and any deadlines.

Obviously this is a key constraint on your project and may determine how the project is structured.

If the deadline is approaching quickly, perhaps a more basic version of your shop can be put online whilst the full version is in the works.

In our experience, most projects take around 3 months to complete - they have been done quicker but we've completed over 100 projects and I'd say this is the average.

Getting a quote

You can use your e-commerce website specification to request sensible, accurate quotes from a number of agencies.

From there you make an informed decision that you know takes in to account your real requirements.

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