Website Requirements Document: What Should It Include?

A website requirements document defines a project's scope in enough detail for both the business and the development team to agree on what's actually being built — business objectives, target audience, pages, features, user roles, integrations, content, SEO, analytics, security, accessibility, performance, supported browsers and devices, and acceptance criteria. Skipping or rushing this document is one of the most common, avoidable causes of scope drift and disputed expectations later in a project.

Most costly website project disputes trace back to a gap between what the client assumed was included and what the development team actually scoped. A clear, shared requirements document closes that gap before development starts, when it's still cheap to resolve — not after, when it's expensive.

What is this website actually supposed to achieve for the business — leads, sales, brand credibility, a self-service tool for customers? Every other requirement should trace back to this, and it's worth stating explicitly rather than assuming it's obvious.

Who is the site actually built for — their needs, technical comfort, and what they're trying to accomplish. This shapes everything from navigation structure to content tone to which devices matter most for testing.

A list of the pages the site needs, and how they relate to each other — this becomes the basis for the information architecture and sitemap developed in planning. See the project planning guide for how this connects to the broader planning process.

Every piece of custom functionality beyond standard content pages — search, filtering, booking, user accounts, dashboards — should be listed and described specifically enough to estimate. Vague functionality descriptions are a common source of scope disputes later.

If the site has different types of users (admin, customer, editor), define what each role can see and do. This directly affects back-end architecture and shouldn't be left as an afterthought discovered mid-development.

List every system the site needs to connect to — CRM, payment processor, email platform, analytics, internal tools — and what data needs to flow in which direction. See the API integration guide for what this actually involves technically.

Specify who needs to edit content after launch, how often, and what kind of content (text, images, structured data like products) — this determines whether a CMS is needed and, if so, what kind.

Note any existing SEO equity that needs to be preserved (for a redesign or migration), target keywords or topics if known, and what needs to be tracked in analytics — key conversion events, not just page views.

State any specific requirements here explicitly — a particular compliance need, an accessibility conformance target, or a performance benchmark — rather than assuming these are handled by default without being scoped.

Specify which browsers and devices genuinely need to be supported, based on your actual audience data where available, rather than testing against an arbitrary, overly broad list that adds unnecessary QA time.

Define what "done" means for each major feature, specifically enough that both sides can objectively agree whether it's met — "the contact form sends a confirmation email within 30 seconds" rather than "the contact form should work well."

A practical checklist to work through when drafting the document.

A requirements document isn't bureaucratic overhead — it's the single artifact most likely to prevent scope disputes, missed features and misaligned expectations later in a project. Even a lightweight version for a small site pays for itself many times over in avoided rework.