Key takeaways
- Describe priority users and tasks, not a generic target audience.
- List content ownership and integrations before estimating.
- Make accessibility, performance and SEO acceptance criteria explicit.
- Name post-launch owners for analytics, updates and technical maintenance.
Business goal and success measures
State the primary outcome—qualified enquiries, purchases, bookings, applications, support deflection or investor confidence—and the secondary outcomes. Add current baselines if available so the team can measure change.
Avoid a list of unrelated ambitions. Ranking first, winning awards, doubling sales and explaining every service may require different work. Priorities help the design resolve conflicts.
Audiences and key journeys
For each priority audience, describe their situation, questions, objections and the action they need to complete. Then map the few journeys the site must support from entry page to outcome.
Include accessibility needs and device context. A field technician on a phone, a procurement team comparing suppliers and an existing customer seeking help should not be forced through the same path.
Content and information architecture
List current pages, content to keep, content to rewrite and missing material. Assign a subject-matter owner and approver. Content delays are one of the most common causes of launch delays because layout depends on real information.
Group pages by user need and define stable, descriptive URLs. Plan redirects from every valuable old URL. Navigation labels should use language visitors understand rather than internal department names.
Features, integrations and constraints
Specify forms, payments, search, accounts, multilingual needs, CRM, email, analytics, consent, maps and third-party tools. Note data flows, permissions and who owns each account.
Document platform, hosting, security, privacy and editorial workflow constraints. “Easy to update” should become specific permissions and tasks the internal team can test.
Quality and launch acceptance
Set expectations for supported browsers, responsive behavior, semantic HTML, keyboard access, contrast, reduced motion, structured data, metadata, canonical URLs, sitemap, robots rules, image handling and performance budgets.
Define review rounds, content freeze, migration, training, backups, monitoring and warranty. A launch checklist should identify who can approve, deploy and roll back.
Put the guide into practice
Bring the checklist to your next planning session, or send us the project and we will turn it into a clear scope, timeline and fixed quote.