Planning to go online

Defining your requirements

After assessing your organisation’s goals and priorities and the costs and benefits, the next useful step in preparing a digital strategy for your organisation is to define—and, if possible, document—your requirements.

Regardless of whether you decide to outsource the implementation of your digital strategy or do it yourself, defining your requirements will help you to make clear what you want to achieve and how to implement your goals. If you outsource the implementation, you can develop these requirements into what is known in industry as a ‘functional specifications document’. This acts as a blueprint document for any company you might contract for the work. Functional specifications provide the exact objectives against which contractors can quote and the means for measuring their deliverables. It is important that the document is comprehensive to avoid undesired outcomes resulting from things left unspecified.

Things to consider in defining your requirements:

1. Your goals—in most cases, online platforms are intended to open up new marketing opportunities, provide new service options, allow you to be always open for business, or enable clients or members, donors and supporters to have a single point of contact. It is important to make your primary goals clear, as these will shape your specifications, including scope, complexity and cost.
2. Your budget—keep this in line with your goals. See the section on costs and benefits for basic guidelines on what to consider to build, upgrade or maintain your online presence.
3. The functionality—you may wish to review the themes on this site to help you determine the functional requirements that you want for your online presence. By understanding generally what technical options exist, you can better define and outline your own requirements.
4. Your timing—an important criterion, especially if you intend to use your online presence to communicate a product launch, tradeshow or specific marketing campaign. The overall project timing should include detailed task breakdown and milestones to allow you to easily track the overall development. If you outsource the design and development of your website, include references to  project timing as part of the overall contract.
5. Your marketing objectives—these are an important part of your specifications, as they will define how you use your online presence to position your organisation and brands, generate traffic, and increase your revenues. See the online marketing chapter for more.