Most website projects that disappoint were not ruined by bad design. They were ruined by a vague starting point. The owner had a picture in mind, the designer had a different one, and nobody found out until the first draft arrived. A written brief closes that gap, and it takes an hour to write.
You do not need design vocabulary. You need to be clear about your business, your customers and your expectations. Here is what I would put in a brief.
1. What the business does, in plain words. Describe your services as you would to a new neighbor. List your main services in order of importance, and mark the ones that bring in the most profit, not just the most work. A designer who knows which service pays the bills will put it first.
2. Who your customers are. Describe your best customers. Are they homeowners, property managers, office administrators? How do they usually find you, and what worries them before they call? Someone searching for an emergency repair needs a very different page than someone comparing three quotes for a remodel.
3. What you want the site to do. Choose a main goal. More phone calls, more quote requests, more bookings, or proof of credibility for people who already know your name. If you list six goals, the site will do none of them well. Be willing to rank them.
4. Where you work. List the towns and counties you serve. This feeds the page content and helps people searching locally find you.
5. Examples you like and dislike. Collect three to five websites, in any industry, that you enjoy using, and say what you like about each: the clear layout, the photos, how easy it was to find the phone number. Add one or two you dislike and say why. Examples communicate taste faster than adjectives like “modern” or “clean,” which mean different things to different people.
6. What you already have. Gather your logo files, brand colors, photos of real work, written testimonials, certifications and any text you want reused. Tell the designer what you can supply and what you cannot. Missing photos are the most common cause of late launches, so find out early.
7. Features you actually need. Do you need online booking, a payment option, a service-area map, a photo gallery, a blog? Separate must-haves from nice-to-haves. Every added feature adds cost and something that can break later.
8. Who decides. Name one person who gives final approval and who will answer questions. Projects stall when three partners each send contradictory notes. If several people need input, collect it in one place before sending it on.
9. Timeline and budget. Share the date you hope to launch and the range you are prepared to spend. Some owners hide the budget, hoping to get a lower quote. In practice, a stated range helps a good designer recommend what fits, instead of quoting for something you cannot afford or underselling what you need.
10. What happens after launch. Ask who will host the site, who will make updates, what that costs and how quickly changes get made. Knowing this up front prevents unpleasant surprises later. My piece on questions to ask before you hire a designer covers more of this from the buyer’s side.
How to use the brief
Send it before the first call, then use the call to talk through anything unclear. Ask the designer to repeat back, in their own words, what they understood your goals to be. If the summary misses the mark, you have found a problem when it is cheap to fix.
Keep the brief afterward. When you review drafts, measure them against what you wrote, not against a vague feeling. It also keeps feedback specific. “The phone number needs to be larger and in the header” is something a designer can act on. “It does not feel right” is not.
If you want a partner to walk through this with you, the team at DirecTech Connect builds websites for local businesses and can help you shape the brief before work begins.
Danielle Lemons is Vice President of Operations at DirecTech Connect, a Nashville provider of business phone systems, managed IT services, websites and digital marketing. More about Danielle.
Read more of Danielle’s writing, or see her profile at DirecTech Connect.
