How to Brief a Web Designer (and Get Better Results)

We see a wide range of briefs. Some are meticulous documents running to several pages. Others are two lines in an email. In our experience, the quality of the brief is one of the most reliable predictors of whether a project will go smoothly. This is not about making our lives easier. A detailed brief helps you too — it forces you to think through what you actually need before any work begins, which reduces revisions, keeps costs down, and means the end result is closer to what you had in mind. Here is what a good web design brief should cover. ## Start with your business and your audience Before any design decisions are made, the designer needs to understand what your business does and who it serves. This sounds obvious, but you would be surprised how many briefs skip straight to "I want a modern, clean website with a dark colour scheme." Tell us: - What your business does and what makes it different - Who your customers are and what they care about - What action you want visitors to take when they land on your site That last point is the most important. Every page of your website should have a purpose. What is it? ## Be honest about your current situation If you have an existing website, tell us what works and what does not. If you have analytics data, share it. If you have specific pages with high bounce rates or poor conversion, flag them. If you are starting from scratch, tell us why. Has the business recently rebranded? Are you entering a new market? This context shapes decisions. ## Define your requirements clearly Be specific about what pages or features you need. "A contact form" is vague. "A contact form that sends enquiries to two email addresses and generates an autoresponse to the sender" is a requirement we can actually build to. Think about: - What pages do you need? - Do you need a blog or news section? - Do you need any integrations — booking systems, payment processing, CRM? - Who will be updating the content after launch, and how technical are they? ## Share examples — both good and bad Links to websites you like are incredibly useful, even if they are from completely different industries. Being able to say "I like the navigation on this site" or "this is the sort of photography style I am after" saves hours of guesswork. Equally useful: sites you dislike. "I do not want it to look anything like our current site" or "this competitor's website feels too corporate and cold" tells us a lot. ## Be clear about budget and timeline Budget is always an uncomfortable conversation, but it is necessary. A vague request for a proposal without a budget range usually results in either a scope that does not match your expectations or a quote that does not match your budget. You do not have to commit to a number. A range is fine. "We have between £3,000 and £5,000 to spend" is enough information to shape an appropriate proposal. Timeline matters too. Do you have a launch date that is fixed — say, a trade show or a product launch? Tell us upfront. Projects with hard deadlines are managed differently. ## The most common mistakes **Designing by committee.** Having six people with equal input approve designs is a reliable way to end up with a website that satisfies nobody. Decide on a single decision-maker before the project starts. **Withholding content.** A website cannot be built properly without content. If you wait until everything else is done to write your copy, you will either launch with placeholder text or delay the project. Start on your content early. **Moving goalposts.** Brief changes mid-project are the main cause of cost overruns and missed deadlines. Take the time to get the brief right before work starts, not halfway through. A good brief is the foundation of a good project. If you want to talk through your requirements before writing anything down, [we are happy to have that conversation](/contact).