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Website requirements gathering documentation: Creating an agenda

Website requirements gathering documentation: Creating an agenda

Introduction

When gathering requirements from a client for a new website, it is essential to take the right steps in order to save yourself time and frustration later on in the project.  The step I am covering in this article is creating an agenda before your meeting.  There are many ways to create your agenda, so I highly recommend fine-tuning yours to your own style of requirements gathering, and to the project that you are undertaking.  

Once you've set the agenda for your meeting, check out our requirements gathering form to bring to the meeting! 

 

The Agenda

Your agenda can actually be a document to expand upon to become a project outline, and even a base for your functional, business, or design documents. When setting up a meeting for your requirements gathering session, I highly recommend sending your client a calendar appointment as a reminder and an indication of how much time they should expect to be in the meeting. Also send the agenda in the invitation (or in a separate e-mail), so that your client can prepare for the meeting as well; hopefully this will make for a much more efficient process.

Here is an example agenda for a website re-design project, which is broken up into 3 different sessions.  Depending on the size of your client and the project, this outline can be expanded upon or consolidated.

 

Session 1 – Kickoff/Overview (1 Hour)

  1. Introductions
  2. Requirements / Goal
  3. Explanation of Technologies

Session 2 – Design (3 Hours)

  1. Design
    1. Review template examples
    2. Logo
    3. Color Schemes
    4. Design mock-ups
    5. Font styles
    6. Borders
    7. Buttons
    8. Website Dimensions / Size
    9. Images
    10. Menu
      1. Navigation style
      2. .Animation
  2. Layout
    1. Sitemap
      1. Additional pages requested
      2. Layout consistency
      3. Header
      4. Content
      5. Footer
  3. Features
    1. Content feeds
    2. Content/image sliders and rotators
      1. Animation type
      2. Layout – which pages, location
      3. Mobile site
        1. Mobile Menu
        2. Image & content scaling
      4. Forms

Session 3 – Content and SEO (2 Hours)

  1. Content
    1. Reuse content or new?
    2. Writing/Creating
    3. Maintain
  2. SEO
    1. Explanation of SEO
    2. .Company profile
    3. Competition
    4. Objective
    5. Location
    6. Targeted keywords
    7. Adwords
    8. Maintenance

Note: This agenda was tailored to the client’s need based on previous conversations, and was after I had already established who the decision makers would be, and who would be my point of contact for each subject matter.

 

Preparation

I typically perform some preparation before the requirements gathering sessions.  In preparation for this project, I setup three different templates and imported content and images from their existing website's home page. I also setup different modules to showcase different types of image/content sliders. It is recommended to bring some materials to your meeting, such as font samples, keyword analysis based on their industry, and a color palette.

 

The Meeting

During the meeting, make sure you take notes on everything discussed. After the meeting, you can then send a document containing an overview of the requirements decided upon, so that the client may review and approve them.  You can then utilize the overview to create a functional, system, or business requirements document based on the information gathered. 

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Tuesday, 06 June 2023

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LATEST ON OUR BLOG

OUR YELP REVIEWS

  • Virgo Web Design recently completed my website MeetPeopleChicago.com. Jerry was easy to work with, was attentive to my questions and was on top of things from start to finish. In addition he was very knowledgable and up to date on the latest technologies. I am very pleased with the final product and I will surely use him again for future enhancements. Thank you Jerry for the great work you have done!

    PETER S.

    Meet People Chicago

  • As a marketing communications person who knew my company needed an up-to-date website built in Joomla, I was very happy we found [Virgo Web Design]. I understood things from a content perspective, but when it came to back-end design and architecture, my hands were tied. [Virgo Web Design] was so knowledgeable and easy to work with, and was always available to answer questions, make tweaks, walk me through front-end editing tasks...you name it. [Virgo Web Design]'s accessibility and can-do attitude made such a difference to our entire team, and I hope I always thanked [them] enough for helping me through the client-side part of the web redesign process.

    CORRIE M.

    Aptude

  • "[Virgo Web Design] did an amazing job on my non-profit's website, ghhaven.org. [They] put our site together quickly and with all of the elements we requested - plus, [they] had a lot of great recommendations for things that we hadn't even considered for the site. [They were] very helpful throughout the process of getting our site launched and I found [them] to be quick in responding to all of my questions/requests as well. [They] even helped us get our business emails set up!

    I would definitely recommend Virgo Web Design as a go-to for all of your web design/development needs. I will definitely be using [them] again in the near future!"

    FRITZIE S.

    Genesis Hopeful Haven

  • [Virgo Web Design] has developed and designed multiple websites for me over the years. [Their] team are exceptionally skilled technicians. Their communication is easy to understand, and they are very proficient - even when near-end deadlines are demanding. Hiring Jerry Virgo and his team is one of the best decisions I have made for my company.

    Michael W

    One Chicago Realty

  • I've used Yahoo sitebuilder for several years and my e-commerce website was due for an overhaul. I asked around & received several recommendations from friends & other small businesses.

    Many of the other referrals came from Web design firms & had significantly higher overheads/billing rates...We had a tight timeline & [they were] very diligent at following up to avoid production delays at time when I was extremely busy. [They] did a nice all around job improving my SEO optimization, creating a polished final product, and documenting the back end with an easy to use manual.

    After the site when live, [they] stood by & helped me troubleshoot unanticipated events & helped me create work arounds.

    Chris H.

    City Tree Delivery

  • [Virgo Web Design] knocked out a full rebuild of our site in a few weeks, guided us through things we didn't understand with ease and calm and gave great advice, training and follow up service

    Nicholle D.

    DANK Haus

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