Web Design on a Shoestring - WebReference- | 4

Web Design on a Shoestring

Nail Down the Functional Requirements Early

Establishing goals is the best way to keep control of a shoestring site, but you need to buttress that work with clearly defined functional requirements.

Let's return to Mary's Something Blue site again and create a functional requirements document. Again, this example assumes that you are a freelance web professional, but the same process can and should be applied by professionals working in any environment. You can start by interviewing your client about what she wants the site to do. The result of your interview will be a broad wish list that might include the following:

  • I would like my visitors to be able to search the site for images and, when they click on them, be able to zoom in and see each piece, down to the detail of the paint strokes.

  • My users need to be able to scan the images quickly and then pick the image that they want to see in more detail.

  • My mother has a slow dial-up connection to the web, and I want her to be able to look at my site. I hate sites that take a long time to load.

  • It must be easy for users to contact me; I want them to be able to call or send me an email if they want to buy a piece or show my art.
Clearly, not every item on such a wish list will make it onto a site with such a small budget. Your job as the web professional is to let the client know that you have heard all of her ideas and that you take them seriously, and to pare the wish list to a set of functional requirements that can be delivered on budget. You'll need to massage the wish list into a functional requirements document that can be accommodated by the resources at hand.

The result of this message should look something like this:

Functional Requirements for the Something Blue Web Site, Version One

The Something Blue web site has possibilities that are broad and exciting, but a few of these are too ambitious for the initial launch. Taken all at once, the potential requirements would result in a budget that exceeds the resources at hand. We have boiled them down to a few complementary requirements that can be achieved within the current budget and timeline. Some of the more expensive requirements that did not make it into this proposal should be saved for a second iteration of the site.

Possible Requirements for Next Phase of Web Development

Requirement

Notes

Cost

Users must be able to click on a small version of an image to see a larger image.

This is an economically viable alternative to the desired pan and zoom technology that would allow users to zoom into each image. It will not allow users to zoom into such detail as paint strokes, but it will afford a nice size of viewing area.

The larger image will be about 600 pixels wide, a size that accommodates most computer screens.

An added benefit of this alternative is that users with slow Internet connections will not be forced to view the large image unless they choose to.

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Users must be able to quickly scan all images by scrolling through a strip of small thumbnail-size images.

 

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The site must be quick-loading and easy to use on a slow Internet connection.

 

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Users must have quick access to contact information.

 

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The site must have a search engine.

This could be expensive and might not be necessary now because you are working with such a small number of images. But you can make this an item for another phase of production, perhaps when you add many more images to the site later.

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Note this well: If you can't get your client to scale back the requirements to fit the budget, this is your chance to walk away. Nailing down an unambiguous vision of what will and will not be on the site is absolutely essential. If you can't get there, everyone will be unhappy in the end. You will work long hours that you will not get paid for, and your final deliverable will not satisfy your client.

I can't emphasize enough that the most important factor in creating a site on a shoestring budget is to consciously restrict the scope to include a limited set of achievable functional requirements. Remember that less is more; it is much better to do a few things well than to try to do too many things and fail.


Created: March 27, 2003
Revised: October 17, 2003

URL: http://webreference.com/promotion/design