So, you want a new website. Because you’re diligent, organised and trying very hard not to make everyone’s life difficult later, you decide to write a brief. You’ll share it with potential suppliers, they’ll read it carefully, stroke their chins thoughtfully, and come back with a quote for a site that does everything you need it to do. At least, that’s the plan.
Website briefs come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes they’re a few paragraphs in an email. Sometimes they’re a carefully prepared document setting out background, aims, audiences and success measures. Occasionally, they become brief-o-pedia: a mighty document complete with technology choices, page-by-page instructions, detailed functionality lists and the faint sense that the website has already been designed before anyone has been appointed to design it.
A detailed brief can be useful. But a long brief is not necessarily a good brief. The most valuable website briefs give a supplier a clear understanding of your organisation, your users, your ambitions and the problems the new website needs to solve. They share enough information to allow a supplier to give an informed response, while leaving space for them to contribute their experience, creativity and judgement. In other words, a good brief describes your requirements. It doesn’t prescribe the entire solution.
Say what you need to achieve
When you’re thinking about a new website, it’s natural to start imagining what it might look like or how it might work. You might think you need a particular type of navigation, an interactive map, a member dashboard, a searchable document library or a bespoke booking system. And you might be right. Sometimes those features are exactly the right answer. But they may also be one of several possible ways to achieve what you actually need the site to do.
So, rather than saying:
“We need an interactive map on the homepage.”
It may be more useful to say:
“Visitors need to be able to find our locations quickly and understand which services are available at each one.”
The first version asks a supplier to price and build a specific feature. The second explains the problem that needs to be solved.
That gives your supplier the opportunity to think properly. Maybe an interactive map is the best answer. Maybe a simpler location finder would work better. Maybe the real issue is the structure of the locations content. Maybe the map is a beautiful idea that will mostly be ignored by users who just want a postcode and a phone number. That kind of thinking is exactly what you want from a good supplier.
The same point applies throughout a website project. Rather than specifying a complicated filtering system, explain that users need to find relevant publications by subject and date. Rather than insisting on a particular membership platform, explain what members need to access, what administrators need to manage and what systems already exist.
This isn’t about being vague. A strong brief should still be clear about what matters: your objectives, your audiences, your content, your required functionality, your technical dependencies and how you’ll judge whether the new site has been a success. The trick is to be clear about the destination, without insisting you already know the best route.
Leave room for creative thinking
You’re probably hiring a web design or development company because you need specialist expertise. That expertise is not just “making the website”. It’s helping you work out what the website should be, how it should function, what it should prioritise and where complexity is worth it — or very much not worth it.
A good supplier will have experience of solving similar problems. They’ll know where projects can become unnecessarily complicated. They’ll spot opportunities that may not have been obvious at the start. They may also gently challenge things in the brief that sound sensible on paper but could be expensive, awkward or unhelpful in practice. That’s a good thing. But it’s much harder for them to use that expertise if the brief is already full of fixed solutions.
Some constraints are unavoidable. You might already have a content management system. You might need to integrate with an existing database. You might have accessibility requirements, brand guidelines, procurement rules, internal systems or a fixed launch date. All of those things are useful for a supplier to know. But unnecessary constraints can make a project less effective and more expensive.
If a brief specifies the platform, the structure, the functionality, the layout, the user journey and the technical approach before any discovery has taken place, you’re tying the supplier’s hands before they’ve had a chance to help. At that point, they’re not really being asked to think. They’re being asked to implement a predetermined solution.
This can also make proposals difficult to compare. One supplier might follow the brief exactly and price everything you’ve asked for, even if they suspect some of it is unnecessary. Another might challenge parts of the brief and recommend a simpler, smarter approach. The second proposal may be more useful, but it can appear less compliant because it doesn’t follow every instruction line by line.
The best briefs set clear boundaries where boundaries genuinely exist, and leave room for discussion everywhere else. That’s where the useful conversations happen.
Sharing your budget helps suppliers help you
One of the most common omissions from website briefs is the project budget. This is understandable. People can be reluctant to disclose a budget because they worry suppliers will simply quote up to the available amount, possibly while cackling and stroking a white cat.
In reality, withholding a budget rarely results in a better proposal. More often, it results in proposals based on completely different assumptions. One supplier might propose a relatively simple site. Another might suggest a substantial digital platform. A third might come back with something wildly ambitious, wildly unaffordable, or both.
There is no single price for a website. The same broad objectives could be achieved through a carefully configured existing system, a more customised website with bespoke functionality, or a much larger digital platform involving integrations, user accounts and ongoing development. Without some indication of budget, a supplier has no idea which level is realistic for you.
Sharing your budget allows suppliers to focus their thinking. It helps them rule out approaches that are not financially realistic, recommend where investment will have the most impact, and identify where requirements may need to be prioritised or phased. You don’t always need to share an exact figure. A range is often enough.
None of this prevents a supplier from proposing options. A good response might explain what can be achieved within the available budget, which features could be introduced later, and where spending more would materially improve the result. That is a far more productive conversation than receiving a proposal for a website you can’t afford. Nobody enjoys that. Except perhaps the spreadsheet.
Be careful when using AI to write your brief
AI can be extremely useful when preparing a website brief. It can help organise your thoughts, suggest headings, improve clarity and turn a collection of rough notes into something more coherent. Used well, it can be a very helpful starting point.
Beware though: AI also has a tendency to make briefs sound more comprehensive than they really need to be. Ask an AI tool to produce a website specification and it may confidently add user dashboards, advanced search systems, personalisation, analytics reporting, CRM integrations, automation workflows, multilingual capabilities, role-based permissions, content migration processes and elaborate security requirements. Some of these may be relevant. Many may not.
The risk is that a simple requirement becomes a large and complicated specification, filled with functions nobody originally asked for and users may never need. If suppliers are asked to respond to that specification, those added complexities can translate directly into higher costs, longer delivery times and a website that is more difficult to manage.
AI is very good at filling gaps. A good brief sometimes needs to leave those gaps open for conversation. Used well, AI can help you express your needs more clearly. Used without judgement, it can accidentally prescribe an over-engineered solution before a specialist has had the chance to understand the project. So by all means use it. Just don’t let it run off into the hills with your scope.
A brief is the beginning of the conversation
A website brief should not attempt to design and build the website before the project has started. Its purpose is to help the right supplier understand your organisation, your users, your aims, your constraints and your available investment.
Explain what is not currently working. Describe what your audiences need to do. Set out any genuine limitations. Be open about budget. Share ideas where you have them, but present them as ideas rather than fixed instructions. Then give your supplier the opportunity to respond.
The most successful website projects are not usually the ones where every detail was specified at the outset. They’re the ones where the client brings a clear understanding of their needs, and the supplier brings the experience and creativity to turn those needs into the right solution.
If you’re planning a new website and would like some advice on writing your brief, feel free to get in touch. We’re always happy to help you shape your thinking, ask the awkward-but-useful questions, and work out what your next website really needs to do.
