Download Now: Free Website Design Inspiration

I once served overcooked turkey on Thanksgiving because the recipe listed a temperature that was way too high. What does this have to do with website design documentation? Let me explain.

Just like I relied on that food blog to tell me the exact temperature for the juicy turkey my guests had hoped to eat, developers rely on design documentation to tell them the specifications of the website you envision. Could they build something without good documentation? Sure. Should they? Not if you want it to turn out right.

It's "like a recipe of a cookbook," says Juan Manuel Devia Pinzon, a HubSpot UX designer who, during our interview, placed a hand over his heart and said, "I love design documentation." I hope by the end of this article, you'll feel that way too.

Table of Contents

• What is web design documentation?
• Who needs web design documentation?
• 4 Benefits of Website Design Documentation
• What to Include in Your Web Design Documentation
• Website Design Documentation Template [Free Download]
• Website Design Documentation Best Practices
• Website Design Documentation: A Recipe for Successful Web Projects

As a freelance tech writer for over a decade, I've come across all sorts of documentation, but design documentation isn't in my wheelhouse. So I tapped my network of talented HubSpot designers and developers as well as an external expert to do research for this article. I learned so much!

Pinzon really helped me understand why design documentation matters. As he put it, "How can we [designers] translate our thinking process to someone to then put it on the website? That is what the documentation is for."

In other words, developers can't read your mind; documentation is the next best thing. Should the container height of a button be 40dp? Should the hero image have a ripple effect when a user clicks it? These specs should be included in the documentation so developers can build it.

Web design documentation may also be shared with other designers or the client to ensure everyone is on the same page about how the website will look and function.

Here's an example of low-fidelity wireframes that a designer might use to communicate their ideas early in the web design process to a client, other designers, or their development team.

Source

Here's a medium-fidelity mockup, which has more detail:

Source

And lastly, here's a high-fidelity mockup, a fully-designed website minus the interactivity:

Source

Web design documentation can dictate the guidelines of a particular project, such as a website redesign for an agency's client, or it can refer to an entire design system that governs all website projects within a brand to maintain a cohesive brand identity.

Here's a design system example from Skyscanner. It details how to use specific brand icons, down to the exact pixels for padding.

Source

More broadly speaking, people may use "web design documentation" to refer to the guides that web design agencies send to their clients (the website owners) so that they can edit and maintain their new websites.

For instance, here's some documentation for the HubSpot Focus theme, which tells website owners and editors how to use the Cards module and why they might want to:

Source

As you can see, web design documentation can take many forms for many audiences. In essence, however, it mainly describes how a website should look and function.

Who needs web design documentation?

Most commonly, designers and developers need web design documentation - but they're not the only ones. Here's a breakdown of the many stakeholders in a web design process who might need access to documentation and the reasons why.

Web Designers

Web designers create web design documentation so they can communicate their ideas and web design strategy to:

• End-users/clients/website owners/stakeholders on what the designers envision for the website early in the process and how to use the website design once it's built.
  
  Clients often need to sign off on wireframes before designers spend more time on high-fidelity mockups. Clients usually also need to sign off on those mockups before designers pass the files on to the development team.
• Other designers on what they envision for the website. Other designers may also use web design documentation as a template or as inspiration for another web project they are designing for the same company.
• Developers on how their designs should work when they hand them off to the development team to build. Developers reference design documentation to know how much padding to put between elements, what behaviors to implement (such as a button shaking when clicked), and which CSS colors to use.

Web Developers

Web developers need web design documentation to understand the specifications of what they need to build.

Website Owners and Editors

Website owners need web design documentation to understand how to use and maintain their websites. This really applies to anyone who will edit the website, such as marketers and writers.

The website design doc that website owners will consult could include wireframes from their web design agency's design team or the documentation for a WordPress theme they purchase in an online marketplace.

4 Benefits of Website Design Documentation

1. Saves Time by Eliminating Back-and-Forth

Good website design documentation shouldn't leave the developer guessing. If it does, the developer either has to go back to the designer and ask questions (slowing the development process), or they'll simply make a guess - and they might guess wrong (again, slowing the development process because they'll have to redo it).

For example, a static website mockup might show a grayed-out toggle on a form. Easy enough. But if you want that toggle to turn blue when a user checks it, you must communicate that in your design documentation, like Mews does here:

Source

2. Creates a Cohesive Brand Identity

Design system documentation is particularly important for brand identity. It also makes designing and developing faster since it contains repeatable elements that designers and developers can copy-paste.

Source

3. Helps with Future Troubleshooting

Websites are living, breathing things. Okay, not literally - but they are constantly changing. What happens if two years down the line, a user reports a bug but no one on the design team remembers how the feature was supposed to behave?

"We go back to the design documentation, and we check it," says Pinzon. "And we say, 'You know, it's been written down here that this behavior should happen' - or the opposite."

4. Ensures Continuity

"Some projects take months," says Pinzon, "and something that you did two months ago, the development team is just now getting ready to pick up."

Website design documentation provides an easy reference point for designers to remember why they made the decision they did, even if it's months later.

By that point, too, there may be different designers on the project. Web design documentation ensures continuity, providing a single source of truth that designers and developers can continually reference to ensure the website is functioning according to the specifications, regardless of who is on the team at that point.

What to Include in Your Web Design Documentation

When creating web design documentation to hand off to developers, you need to consider the scope of the project. If it's a simple website project, like a one-time splash landing page, you can just send a mockup and have your developers build it.

"At the very least, designers should be handing off well-designed/defined mockups of what the site should look like along with notes," says Kyle Brigham, chief strategy officer of Chicago-based web development agency Marcel Digital.

"Ideally, they would utilize global elements to ensure that designs are consistent across templates and components, and provide any notes on functionality/expected experience that the developers can utilize to shape the website."

For more complex projects, like a multi-page website, you might want to include the following in your website design documentation:

• Overview: Why is the website being built? What are its primary goals?
• Audience: Who is the intended audience for this website?
• Behavior: What should each element do when the user interacts with it?
• Colors, spacing, placement, typography: Include things like color values, padding around icons, and the fonts you wish to use.
• Minimal code: This is optional, but some designers will include CSS snippets for developers.
• High-fidelity mockups or prototypes: These are fully fleshed-out webpage designs that might even include interactivity.
• Accessibility annotations: Neglecting accessibility is a common website design mistake you don't want to make.
  
  Pinzon showed me the accessibility annotations in his design documentation, which tells developers crucial information, such as what will happen if a user is navigating using only a keyboard or if they're using a screen reader.

Here's an example of accessibility notes from the design system documentation of Zinnia:

Source

"More advanced projects may require that the designs be full fidelity so the user experience can be emulated in a design program, such as Figma," Brigham explains. "This helps to show how the website will work to the end user but also helps to better articulate functionality to developers.

"Some designers will only hand off designs; others that are more technically adept may have the ability to hand off well-constructed HTML/CSS to even better define how the pages should map to the website."

Pro tip: Figma's Dev Mode makes it easier for designers and developers to work together and can speed up development time by providing necessary details and code snippets for the design files.

Website Design Documentation Template [Free Download]

Free Website Design Documentation Template for Marketers

If you're a marketer requesting a mockup from a designer, you don't need website design documentation.

"As a designer, I would be a bit confused if a marketer came to me with design documentation," Pinzon told me. "Kind of like a realtor coming to an architect with blueprints."

In home building, the architect is responsible for creating blueprints for the builders. Similarly, in website building, the designers are in charge of creating web design documentation.

If you're a non-designer trying to communicate an idea to a design team, what you really need is a web design brief.

"Preparing a document like this is a great way to help fast track these early stages of your web design project," writes Australia-based Blis Web Agency. "It allows our web design team to quickly understand how long they have to deliver the website, what your website needs to do and how much your company can afford to invest into the new website."

Lucky for you, Pinzon put together a web brief template with the help of generative AI, so you don't have to start from scratch. The goal of this web design brief is to help marketers, website owners, and other non-designers communicate what they need a web designer to create.

Feel free to save the image below or use it as inspiration. For the "Design and Layout" section, read how to create a wireframe and check out these free web design tools.

Alternatively, you can simply screenshot examples of webpages you like and send them to the designer for inspiration.

Free Website Design Proposal Template for Designers

If you're a designer selling your web design services to a client, you can use this free website proposal template to close the deal.

Website Design Documentation Best Practices

As you create website design documentation, follow these best practices that I learned from both designers and developers.

Document as you go.

Like journaling, creating documentation forces you to think through your process now, helping you to remember and explain your choices later.

"When we are designing something, we're making decisions in our minds as designers," says Pinzon. "If we don't write those down, we're going to forget why we decided on something."

Pro tip: Create design documentation templates so your team can easily copy and build upon them for each project rather than start from scratch. Figma is a popular tool for this.

Focus on functionality, not just design.

I wanted to make sure to get a developer perspective in here, so I asked HubSpot Principal Developer Nhori Lopchan-Edmonds what she wishes designers knew about web design documentation.

Her response? "Prioritize clarity and detail about functionality, not just aesthetics."

As Lopchan-Edmonds explains, "While visuals hold significance, it's crucial for developers to have documentation that thoroughly explains the behavior of interactive elements like buttons, animations, hover states, and forms. This includes specifying:

• The actions triggered and/or styles applied when UI components are hovered over, clicked, or focused.
• Guidelines for responsive design across different screen sizes, including identifying breakpoints for each viewport.
• Accessibility requirements, such as tabbing order.
• Handling of expected edge cases, such as error states or successful form submission."

Don't sweat the pixels.

This revelation surprised me most: Designers shouldn't expect a pixel-perfect copy of their mockups to make it to production. In fact, they should avoid using pixels in their documentation when possible. Instead, opt for responsive units.

"While a static design might not translate perfectly to the front end due to differences in screen sizes, resolutions, and browser behaviors, responsive units empower elements to fluidly adjust to diverse environments," says Lopchan-Edmonds.

"These slight deviations from the original design are embraced for fostering usability and accessibility, emphasizing that achieving a seamless user experience is more important than a meticulous pixel-to-pixel match. The use of pixels (px) should be minimized, restricted to implicit components such as border-radius or base font-size. "

Keep designers and developers in constant contact throughout the web design process.

Documentation isn't a replacement for consistent communication. Ideally, your designers and developers touch base throughout the web design process - not just when it comes time to build.

"You have to work with your designer and your developer to make sure that they're on the same page about what documentation is going to be handed off to the development team," Brigham says.

He explains that there are many different levels of documentation that a designer could create, from mockups with minimal annotations to full-fidelity designs with CSS and some coding. Having some insight into what will eventually be handed off helps developers scope the project.

Brigham adds, "Getting those two teams aligned with what the final documentation is going to be when the design files are handed off to the development team is going to be important in planning, in determining what your scope is going to look like for both of those teams, and for making sure that you are being as efficient as possible with your timeline and that there aren't any surprises."

Pinzon agrees. "The developer shouldn't be surprised when they get something handed over. They should know what is happening."

And if they don't know what's happening? Well, the developer might shoot down your ideas simply because they didn't have the chance to include them in the scope beforehand.

You don't always need documentation.

I know, I know. I just spent this entire article making a case for website design documentation. But it was actually Pinzon who delivered this shocker on our call: "Documentation, I think, is not always needed."

To be fair, he prefaced it with: "I guess this could be an important debate for the blog article."

So, let's debate it, then. Documentation clarifies design thinking, aligns stakeholders, saves time in the long run, and ensures the best website gets built. Why would it ever not be needed?

Pinzon pointed out two scenarios where you can ditch the documentation:

1. When you're building something for one-time use. "In a very, very rare case where you're just building one thing once, and you already have a template, and you're probably using a CMS, you don't need design documentation because you're going to build it only once," says Pinzon.
2. When you need to build fast. Documentation takes time - and sometimes, your team doesn't have that. In cases where you need a webpage built as quickly as possible, a developer and designer might work side by side to get the page up ASAP, no documentation required.

Website Design Documentation: A Recipe for Successful Web Projects

Unlike recipes, web design documentation can be more open to interpretation. After all, you can redo the code on a website; you can't unburn a turkey. But that doesn't mean you should leave developers guessing critical information.

Whipping up good design documentation takes time, but it's time well spent. Good documentation aligns teams, saves time in the long run, and ensures continuity no matter how long your web design project drags on or who joins or leaves the team.

For complex projects with multiple stakeholders, it's worth creating (and following) web design documentation - especially if you want your project to turn out just right.

Topics: Website Design

Don't forget to share this post!