Website development: what to specify and how to judge the result

Planning a business website in Singapore: what to brief, how to measure speed and accessibility, what the PDPA asks of contact forms, and who should own the site.

A business website does not need to be large; it needs to load quickly, work on a phone, say clearly what you do and let people reach you. This guide covers how to brief one and how to tell whether the result is good.

Brief the site, not the design

Start with the pages and what each must achieve, then the content: who writes the text, who supplies photos, and who will update it later. Decide whether you need a content management system or whether a few pages that rarely change can be simpler and cheaper. List any features beyond pages, such as booking, search, a member area or a shop. A shop is a bigger project; see e-commerce development.

Measure speed with Core Web Vitals

Google publishes three Core Web Vitals with thresholds for a good experience:

• Largest Contentful Paint (loading): within 2.5 seconds.
• Interaction to Next Paint (responsiveness): 200 milliseconds or less.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (visual stability): 0.1 or less.

Google recommends judging them at the 75th percentile of page loads, for mobile and desktop separately. Put these numbers in the acceptance criteria. Then “fast” is something you can check, not a matter of opinion.

Make it usable by everyone

WCAG 2.2, the W3C’s accessibility standard, is the usual target, at level AA. It covers contrast, keyboard use, text alternatives for images, form labels and errors, and, new in 2.2, a minimum target size of 24 by 24 CSS pixels for things people click or tap. Ask the developer which level they build to and how they test it.

Forms and personal data

A contact or enquiry form collects personal data, so the PDPA applies. The PDPC’s list of obligations includes telling people the purpose of collection, getting their consent, protecting the data and keeping it only as long as needed. In practice: say on the form what you will do with the details, link a privacy notice, send submissions somewhere secure rather than a shared inbox, and decide how long you keep them. The same applies to analytics and marketing tags that collect personal data.

Own your site

Register the domain in your company’s name and keep the login. Hold the hosting account yourself, or make sure the contract gives you access. As with apps, the author of a work generally owns its copyright even when it was commissioned, unless agreed otherwise in writing. Have the contract assign you the design, code and content made for the site, and ask for a copy of everything at handover.

Check before you accept

• Every page works on a phone and on a desktop browser.
• Core Web Vitals meet the thresholds above.
• Forms deliver to the right place and the privacy notice is linked.
• Each page has its own title and description, and broken links return a proper “not found” page.
• You have the logins for domain, hosting and content management.

For common questions, see the website development FAQs and why a business needs a website.