The Ultimate Guide to writing a website design brief
What should be included in a website design brief?
Your website acts as your business’s shopfront, salesperson, and marketing hub all in one place. Like any successful project, creating a great website starts with a clear plan.
That plan begins with a website brief.
A well-structured and strategic website brief can make the difference between a website that delivers for a business and one that just ends up being an expensive coat of paint.
Taking time to write this document well can be the difference between success and failure and ultimately thousands of pounds. What makes an effective website brief?
Project Overview
The brief should begin with a simple overview of the project. This section explains what the website project is about and why it is being undertaken. For example, you may be launching a new business, merging multiple businesses, refreshing an outdated website, adding e-commerce or additional functionality. This context helps the design team understand the bigger picture and the purpose behind the project.
Business Background
Providing background about your business this helps the agency or development team understand your organisation and industry. This may include information about your products or services, your market position, and your brand values. This is critical as designers will have no insight into your business you need to guide them on what is key. Which products or services are critical and generate the most business, which are emerging all this information will determine navigation, home page layout and SEO. If an agency is not taking the time to sit with you and understand your business you should be wary.
Project Goals and Objectives
Clearly outlining your goals is essential. A website should do more than just look good, it should support specific business outcomes. Common objectives include generating leads, increasing online sales, improving brand awareness, or providing information to customers. Defining these goals not only helps guide design decisions but will make you as a business really understand what you want from the website and ensure the project delivers measurable results.
Target Audience
Understanding who the website is designed for is key to creating an effective user experience. Your brief should describe your ideal customers or users, including their needs, behaviours, and expectations. Knowing the target audience helps inform decisions about design style, messaging, content structure, and functionality. Again this isn’t something an agency will have knowledge of within your business or even industry. So ask AI to help with these personas.
Competitor and Inspiration Examples
Including examples of competitor websites or designs you admire can help communicate the style or functionality you are aiming for. This doesn’t mean copying another site, but it gives the design team a sense of your preferences and expectations. You might highlight what you like about certain websites, such as their layout, navigation, or visual style. Once you have done this take a look at agency website examples and portfolios. It’s really important that the style of an agency aligns with your creative expectations.
Website Structure and Key Pages
Your brief should outline the key pages you expect the website to include. Providing a basic sitemap or page list helps the development team understand the scale of the project and the information architecture required. Challenge the existing. Just because your current site have 200 pages and 150 blog articles doesn’t mean the new site needs all this information porting over. I always advise to start small and expand, future proof the build to allow you to develop rather than just copying what you already have.
Features and Functionality
Modern websites often require more than just static pages. Your brief should identify any specific functionality needed, such as contact forms, booking systems, e-commerce capabilities, user portals, integrations with CRM systems, or blog functionality. Clearly listing these requirements helps prevent surprises later in the development process. Before you sign off get into really granular detail. This is where getting help from a technical consultant can help. They can advise on what is possible, easily achievable or what will require expensive bespoke coding. You don’t know what you don’t know ask someone to help if it’s a large and complex build.
Content Requirements
Content plays a vital role in the success of a website. The brief should explain whether content will be provided by your team or created by the agency. This includes written copy, images, videos, and downloadable resources. If existing content will be reused from a previous website, it’s helpful to indicate what will be kept, updated, or removed. This will also help you internally commit the resources you need to a project. Most projects I work on stall because the client can’t provide the time and resources for content.
Budget and Timeline
Providing an estimated budget helps agencies propose realistic solutions that fit within your resources. Likewise, sharing a preferred timeline ensures that the project schedule aligns with any important business milestones, such as product launches or marketing campaigns. A key takeaway is often agencies are trying to upsell businesses services they don’t need. Be clear about budget and expectations. Look at post launch support. Look at payment structures and remember that a site needs help at launch and post launch. I would be looking at reserving payment on the final 20% of project value until after a set snagging period. At PepperStreet that’s 28 days.
Success Metrics
Finally, the brief should define how success will be measured once the website launches. This may include metrics such as increased website traffic, improved conversion rates, more enquiries, or higher search engine rankings. Establishing these metrics ensures everyone involved understands what the project is ultimately trying to achieve. Do remember that a website is simply a tool in a box of marketing tricks. You are asking an agency to deliver a technically robust, SEO optimised website what you doo with that tool afterwards will determine it’s success or failure. You wouldn’t buy a spade from B&Q pop it in your shed then return 3 months later to B&Q asking why the hole in your garden hadn’t been dug?
Final Thoughts
A clear and detailed website brief is the starting point for any successful web project. By outlining your goals, audience, content, functionality, and expectations, you provide designers and developers with the information they need to create a website that supports your business objectives. Taking the time to prepare a strong brief not only saves time and money but also helps ensure the final website delivers real value for your organisation.
