If we think about developing a website, we will face these two questions. “What is content?” and “What is functionality?”. By combining these questions, we can also ask ourselves this question: What is the differences between content and functionality?
The content of the website is to provide direct access to files, text, movies, or images in a general and simple way. Essentially, direct access to information… Users can often interact with websites to perform some complex tasks. There are even lots of websites in which you can make new websites with them. Those can be called task-based systems. The reason for making two separate lists for requirements are, that content and functionality requirements are fundamentally different. Although long texts are written or quality pictures are taken or long hours were spent for editing the video, content is less complex than functionality. The functionality of a website needs to be planned and built. Designing a shopping cart or a checkout system is more difficult than writing some text or taking some photos.
For instance, a website user wants to learn how much shipping will cost. That’s an acceptable user need. If you describe your shipping policies on the website, it can be a great answer for it. Especially for a simple website, it is an easy way to write a short text explaining how shipping charges are calculated. But on bigger e-commerce websites, shipping charges are often more complex. So you have to build a shipping calculator. It would be a happy situation for the user to calculate the shipping costs by the website. In summary, as a website designer, we have to ask the question for content and functionality requirements: “Does this fulfill a client need?” and “Does this fulfill a user need?” Most importantly, you must frequently apply to your website's strategy documents. That's where after all, you determine the client's needs and user needs for the site.
Here's a long list of all kinds of example content requirements:
Logo
Contact info
About us text
Social media links
Product images and descriptions
Featured products
Pricing and shipping Infos
Customer reviews
FAQs
Headshots
Bios
Food menus
Ingredients
Opening times
Directions
History of the company
Academic calendar
Events info
PDFs
Audio files
Images gallery
Credits
Blog posts
All of these examples have to do with text, images, audio, video, and files. Here's a list of example functionality requirements:
Sorting
Filtering
Search
Image slideshow
User authentication
Account creation
Recover password
Shopping cart
Shipping calculator
Order form
Check out
Order history
Contact form
Image zoom
Upload images
Color picker
Date picker
Share to social media
However, the common point of all these elements is defining complex systems that not only define the content but also allow users to complete certain tasks.
Source: Roman Jaster, Web Design: Strategy and Information Architecture by California Institute of the Arts, (https://www.coursera.org/)