A website brief you can actually finish.

You should be able to ask for help with your website without first becoming an expert in websites.

A useful brief gives an agency enough context to ask better questions. A few honest pages can do that. They can also save you from comparing proposals that solve completely different problems.

Start with these details. If you do not know an answer, say so.

Explain the business in plain language

Tell us what you sell, who buys it and why they choose you. Include the part that someone outside your industry might misunderstand.

“We supply packaging” leaves a lot open. “We make small runs of printed packaging for independent food businesses” gives the conversation a more useful place to start.

If your offer is changing, explain what is changing. A website built around yesterday’s business will need another difficult conversation soon enough.

Name the job the website needs to do

Choose the main problem you want the project to address. You might need to explain a complicated service, launch a new offer, make booking easier or replace a site your team cannot update.

Describe what a better situation would look like. If the current enquiries are a poor fit, explain which customers you want to hear from and what makes an enquiry useful. If the problem is booking, describe where customers currently get stuck.

You can include secondary goals. Put them in order so everyone knows which decisions matter most.

Describe the people using it

Who is visiting, and what are they trying to work out? What questions do customers ask before they buy? Who else influences the decision?

Bring customer language if you have it. A few anonymised questions from sales calls can be more helpful than a long list of demographic labels. Remove personal or confidential details before sharing them.

List the essentials

Note the features the website must support. Separate the things you need at launch from the things you could add later.

That list might include a booking platform, payments, a product catalogue, two languages, a customer login or a connection to your CRM. Name the tools you already use and explain what each connection needs to do.

You do not need to specify the technology. Give the team enough information to investigate a sensible solution.

Be honest about content

A project can look ready on paper while the words and images are still waiting for someone to make them.

Say what exists, what can be reused and what needs work. Who will write the product information? Is there approved photography? Who can sign off a claim about your service?

Include content creation in the conversation early if you need it. It affects the scope, the schedule and the final experience.

Share the constraints

Give a comfortable investment range and explain whether a date is fixed or simply preferred. If the deadline depends on an event, say which one.

List the people who need to approve the work. Agreeing on one person to collect feedback can make the process easier to manage.

It also helps to explain how quickly your team can review work. A schedule needs room for decisions on both sides.

Bring references with reasons

Share a small number of websites you like and point to the detail that interests you. The typography, a product comparison, the way a booking works or the tone of the writing all tell a different story.

“We like how clearly this page explains the service” is useful direction. Include anything that feels wrong for your business too, with a brief explanation.

Leave room for a conversation

The brief is a starting point. A good discovery process will challenge some assumptions and help fill in what you could not answer.

You can download our short website brief worksheet, fill in what you know and use it with your team. It is a plain text file you can edit in any text editor.

When you are ready, tell us a little about the project. You can start with the problem and we will help work out the scope.

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