How to write a brief for a website

If you’re reading this, the chances are that you have been given the task of writing a brief for a new website or a redesign of your old website. This page will help guide you through the process. It’s not the definitive list of what you’ll need, but it’s certainly an excellent starting point, and will serve as food for thought. We have broken this guide up into a number of stages to make it more manageable.

Free template download

You can download our website design brief word template for free at the bottom of the page.

OK let's get into it.

Grab a drink and let us walk you through what you need to prepare when writing an effective website design brief or Request For a Proposal (RFP).

1. About your organisation

The website design company will need to know a bit about your company in order to get a feel for how they should design your website. A good starting point would be to list the following:

• A couple of paragraphs about your company
• The products your sell or services you provide
• The size of the company – e.g. the number of employees, a rough turnover figure (if you want to provide it – there is a lot of difference between how a £100,000 company and a £100,000,000 company should look!)
• Are you an international company? If so, which countries?
• How long have you been established?
• Describe the company using five or ten words (e.g. young, vibrant, technology based etc.)

2. The old website

If you have an existing website, firstly let the web design company know the URL! (the web address) Then answer the following questions:

• What is good about the website?
• What is bad about the website? (i.e. old colour schemes, out-dated design)
• How long ago was it built? and who built it?
• What levels of traffic is it currently receiving?
• What percentage of the traffic is from smart phones & tablets?
• Which countries are your visitors from?
• What are the top 5 web browsers and platforms (Mac/PC/Android/iOS) visiting your website?
• How often do you get a genuine sales lead through the website?
• Who is responsible for updating the site?

In order to meet your requirements, any design agency would need to know why the old website is no longer suitable. So also detail anything else that could be relevant.

3. The new website

You must now examine what you need from the new website. So, a good starting point would be to consider the following:

• Outline the aims of the website ( e.g. to increase traffic, increase product awareness, generate more sales, offer e-commerce, advertise a new product or service)
• Who is the target audience? Has this changed from the old site? What are the demographics (e.g. children, adults, social class, income levels, location, etc.)
• How will your target audience be accessing your site – via their phones, tablets or desktops?
• Is the new website part of a re-brand, or a new product launch?
• Is there other advertising taking place that the new website should tie in with?
• What are the unique selling points for your company, your products or your services?
• What industry are you aiming the website at?
• Is the market already saturated with competitors?
• List a few competitors’ websites.
• For e-commerce websites, you should detail who you bank with – this will be important for deciding on which payment gateway you should use.

4. Budget

Outlining your budget is very important. Have no doubt, you will get better, more accurate quotes in response. If all of the agencies know what the budget is and are working to the same brief, you’re likely to get very similar quotes, which is good, right? At least you can compare apples with apples.

• What is the budget for design and development of the website?
• Is there a budget for ongoing support and maintenance?
• What is the digital marketing budget for the next 6 months?

5. The look and feel of the new website

The website should be an extension of any offline media, advertising or branding that you have. It is always helpful to be provided with a brochure, some marketing literature or the annual report to help get a feel for the company, so include them with the brief.

In order to get an idea of the kind of site that you want, it is worthwhile noting three or four websites that you like – not necessarily competitors’ or sites related to your industry, just give a few example sites that you like the colour schemes of, the navigation, or the interactive elements.

6. The content of your new website

Start thinking about how you want to populate your new site.

Resist the urge to duplicate your existing content in your new site – if your existing site is letting you down in some way, the chances are that the content is no longer up to scratch. Having thought about your target audience, take the opportunity to review whether your content still meets their needs.

Don’t put this off until the end of the project – start thinking now about how you’re going to produce the copy text. Do you have the resources or skills to create and supply the text to go on the website? If the answer to these questions is no, you will need a web copywriter as well – we can provide this service if necessary.

• Do you have the skills & resources available to carry out a content audit of your existing website?
• Who will be responsible for generating content
• Can you provide any brand guidelines (preferably incorporating details on tone of voice, phraseology etc)?
• Do you have any corporate images, photography or videos?
• Can you provide your logo & corporate identity pack? Ideally in a vector format such as .eps, .pdf or .psd?

7. Technical requirements

You should outline any special technical requirements that your company might have:

• Do you already own the domain?
• Will you require hosting?
• Is it an intranet/extranet or internet site?
• If it is an intranet, is it a Windows only environment?
• Are you on a Windows server or a Linux server?
• Should you be catering specifically for text only browsers, audio web browsers or Braille readers?
• Is your site likely to be targeting people with special needs or requirements? I.e. limited mobility, colour blind, deaf, learning difficulties etc.
• Considering your exiting website’s analytics – do you have a particularly high proportion of mobile users?

8. Maintenance

The ongoing maintenance of a website is an often overlooked aspect of the website’s design:

• Who will be responsible for the on-going maintenance of the website?
• Do you have the skills, resources and time to maintain the website in-house?
• What happens if that member of staff leaves the company?
• Would you prefer to make an arrangement with the website design/ website development company for them to handle website maintenance?

9. Promotion

You are investing in a new website, so you want customers to see it, right? Now detail how you will promote it. An online business is no different to a traditional business it needs marketing.

10. Digital Marketing

The digital marketing of a website is often overlooked when considering the website brief. The promotion of your website, in terms of increasing visibility in search engines and generating a sense of engagement, is vitally important to the continued success of the site.

There are a number digital marketing activities that you should consider:

• Social media campaigns.
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and Display Network adverts (image & rich media adverts on relevant websites) – paid listings you see in search engines.
• Email marketing.
• Content marketing – i.e blogs, video content, newsletters, social media.
• Banner advertising on related websites.
• Affiliate marketing

11. Offline promotion

A website can also be supported by an offline marketing strategy, perhaps consider some of the following activities:

• Direct mail
• Brochures and flyers
• Outdoor advertising
• PR exercises
• Sponsorship
• Vehicle wraps

You might be thinking, ‘why do they need to know about offline promotion’? This is crucial if your communications are to be consistent across various channels. The decision making process is complex, people view product and services across a variety of devices and channels, at different times of the day. You need to ensure you capture their interest and engage with them at the right time, on the right channel.

Conclusion

You should finish your website design brief with a short conclusion, outlining what you would like to receive back from the design agency. As a rule of thumb, at Method & Class we provide a full proposal, detailing how the site would be built, the layout, the costs (initial and on-going), the timescales involved and any assumptions and conditions that we have made.

Don’t forget to include timescales and be realistic; a proper proposal can take a number of days to prepare, so don’t ask for it back in 2 days time.

The option to download a free template is below - we hope it helps 🙂