Articles · Agency & Vendor Guides
A website brief template, and the honest version of what belongs in one
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We read a lot of these. The ones that produce accurate quotes are rarely the longest, and the difference is almost always that somebody made a decision before writing it down.
What a brief is actually for
A website brief is not a specification, and treating it as one is why so many are painful to write. Its job is to let several suppliers quote the same thing accurately, and to let you tell their answers apart. That is all. The detail that serves that purpose belongs in; the detail that does not is costing you a weekend.
The corollary is that a brief which produces four wildly different quotes has not failed at being detailed. It has usually failed to say what matters most, so each agency guessed differently, and the cheapest guess wins for the wrong reason.
The template
Copy this, delete what does not apply, and send it. It is deliberately not behind an email form: a template you have to trade an address for is one nobody links to, and we would rather it was useful than that it was a lead magnet.
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01 The one-line summary
What the site is for, in a sentence, without adjectives. "A five-page site that gets joinery enquiries from within forty miles of Bristol" beats a paragraph about being modern and user-friendly, and it tells an agency more.
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02 About the business
What you sell, to whom, and how people currently find you. Include the unglamorous parts: where the work actually comes from today, and whether the website has anything to do with it.
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03 What is wrong with the current site
Be specific and be blunt. "Nobody can update it without paying the last developer" and "it does not work on a phone" are useful. "It looks dated" is not, unless you say what it should look like instead.
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04 What success looks like
The number that would make this worth doing: more enquiries, better-qualified enquiries, orders, a lower support load. If you cannot name one, say so plainly, because that is itself worth knowing before anyone quotes.
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05 Audience
Who buys, and who else has to be convinced. On a considered purchase the person searching is often not the person signing off, and a site written for only one of them tends to lose the other.
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06 What the site has to do
Functionality in plain terms. Take payments, take bookings, hold a member area, sync with an accounts package, run in two languages. Say which are essential and which are wishes, because that distinction is where most of the cost sits.
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07 Content: who writes it
The single most common cause of a late project. Say whether the copy exists, who is writing it, and whether photography is needed. A brief that leaves this blank is quoted with an assumption you will not like.
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08 Things you like, and why
Three or four links, with a line each on what specifically you like. The reason matters far more than the example. "This navigation makes sense on a phone" is instruction; "this looks nice" is decoration.
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09 Budget range
A range, not a number, and a real one. See the section below on why withholding it works against you.
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10 Timing, and the reason for it
A deadline with a cause attached is a constraint everybody can plan around. A deadline with no reason gets treated as a preference, which is usually what it turns out to be.
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11 Who decides
Name the person who signs off and the people who must be consulted. Projects do not usually stall on the work. They stall waiting for an answer from somebody who was never told they owed one.
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12 How to respond, and by when
What you want back, in what format, and the date. If you are approaching several agencies, say how many. It is not rude and it sharpens what you get.
The five sections that matter
If you write nothing else, write these: what the site is for, what is wrong with the current one, the budget range, a deadline with a reason, and who decides. A brief carrying only those five is genuinely quotable. A twenty-page document missing any of them is not, however thorough the rest looks.
That is the difference between how to write a website brief and how to write a long one, and it is the reason most website design brief templates are longer than they need to be. Length signals effort. It does not signal a decision.
What to leave out
A sitemap you have already drawn, unless you are certain of it. It anchors everybody to a structure that predates the conversation, and the structure is usually the part worth arguing about.
Technology choices, unless you have a real constraint such as an existing system that must be integrated with. Specifying the platform in a web design brief rules out suppliers who would have solved the problem better and cheaper, for a preference you may not need.
Long lists of adjectives. Modern, clean, professional and user-friendly appear in almost every brief we receive and separate nothing, because no agency has ever proposed the opposite.
The budget question
This is the section people leave out, and it is the one that costs them most. The worry is understandable: name a number and watch the quote arrive at exactly that number.
The problem is what happens instead. With no range, a supplier either quotes the fullest reading of your brief, which prices them out of a job you might have wanted them for, or the narrowest, which wins the work and discovers the rest later as extras. Neither serves you, and the second is worse.
A range solves it, and the concern about padding is easy to test: ask what they would cut to land at the bottom of it. A good supplier answers immediately and the answer tells you what they think is essential. A bad one cannot, which is also worth knowing before you appoint anyone.
Common questions
How long should a website brief be?
Two to four pages is plenty for most projects, and longer is usually worse. The length that causes problems is not the short brief, it is the twenty-page one assembled by committee where the requirements contradict each other and nobody has said which matters most. If you can only manage one page, spend it on the goal, the audience and the budget.
Do I have to include a budget?
You do not have to, and withholding it costs you. Without a number an agency either quotes for the most expensive reading of your brief or the cheapest, and both waste your time. A range is enough. The fear is that the price will expand to fill the budget, which is a fair worry about a bad supplier and easily tested by asking what they would cut to reach the bottom of your range.
What is the difference between a website brief and a web design brief?
In practice people use both for the same document. If there is a distinction worth keeping, a web design brief leans towards look, feel and brand, and a website brief covers the whole project including functionality, content, integrations and launch. Ask for the second, because a design-only brief tends to leave the expensive parts undiscussed until they are quoted as extras.
Should I say who else I am approaching?
It helps more than it hurts. Knowing a brief has gone to three agencies rather than one tells us the effort is competitive and tells you who takes it seriously. What is worth avoiding is a long list, which reads as a fishing exercise and gets the least attention from the people you actually want.
What makes a brief genuinely good to receive?
One clear sentence on what the site is for, an honest description of what is wrong with the current one, a budget range, a real deadline with the reason attached, and a named decision-maker. Everything else is useful and none of it is as useful as those five. The briefs that go wrong are almost never missing detail; they are missing a decision.
Written the brief and want it pressure-tested?
Send it over. We will tell you where it will produce quotes you cannot compare, and what is missing that every supplier will have to guess at, whether or not you end up briefing us.
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