The Short Brief That Gets You a Better Website

The most useful project brief I receive is rarely a designed PDF. It is a message that says who the customer is, what they are trying to do, and which part of the current site is getting in the way. Those projects launch faster than the ones with a folder of wireframes, because nobody is guessing what the page is for.

If you are about to hire someone to build or rebuild a site, you can write this in an evening. It will do more for the result than another round of notes about making the blue a little nicer.

Write it the way you would brief a new employee

A developer is joining the business for a few weeks. They need the same things you would tell someone on their first Monday.

• What you sell, in one or two sentences a customer would recognize. Skip the internal nickname. Say the thing people actually pay for.
• Who it is for, and who it is not for. "Small clinics that need a booking page" is useful. "Everyone who wants quality" describes nobody, so the page ends up speaking to nobody.
• The one action a good visit ends with. A booking, a purchase, a phone call, a wholesale inquiry. If you have three, rank them. The page can only shout one thing at a time.
• Proof. Years in business, a result you can stand behind, photos of the real work, a sentence a customer already said. A site with no proof asks a stranger to trust a stranger.
• The words you already use. Paste a few phrases from real messages customers send you. Those beat a headline invented to sound premium.

What to include so the wrong site does not get built

1. Pages you know you need now. Home, about, services, work, contact. Add a shop or a booking calendar only if someone will actually use it in the first month.
2. Things that must stay. Your domain, a logo customers already recognize, a color printed on your cards, the email address people already have.
3. Things that must change. The sentence that is wrong, the form that never arrives, the page that falls apart on a phone.
4. Access you can share safely. Hosting, the domain registrar, analytics. Never your bank password, and never the password to your personal email. A person who asks for those is not someone to keep on the project.
5. A date that matters, and a sentence for "done." A season, a launch, a fair. Dates make the scope honest, because they force a choice about what can wait.

Leave room on purpose

Do not design every pixel in the brief unless you are already sure about the design. Tell your developer the job of each page. "This page should make a clinic owner request a demo" is a better instruction than a screenshot covered in arrows. You will still review the design. You will review it against a purpose, which is a calmer meeting for everyone.

Also say what can wait. A blog, a second language, customer logins, a long animation. Marking those as later is how the first version ships while you still have energy for it. A site that tries to include the whole future on day one tends to launch none of it.

A template you can copy

Paste this into a note and fill the blanks. Half a page is a success. A perfect document that takes three weeks is a delay.

We help [who] to [result].
The site is for [a specific person], not for [someone you will turn away].
A good visit ends when they [one action].
They should trust us because [one or two real proofs].
Pages we need now: [list].
We will add later: [list].
Please keep: [domain, brand, content that already works].
Please fix: [the painful things].
We would like to launch by [date], and the first version is done when [one sentence a customer can actually do].

Send two sites you like, and say what you like about them. "The way they explain pricing" is something a developer can use. "Make it look expensive" is a mood. Moods are welcome. They are just not enough to build from.

Then have the conversation

A good developer will push back somewhere. They might tell you the shop can wait, that the contact form should be the first thing on the page, or that the reference site you love is solving a different problem than yours. That pushback is part of the work. Someone who agrees with every line and sends a price in five minutes has not really read it.

If you want a second pair of eyes on a brief, or you are ready to build from one, write to me. The projects page shows the kind of products I have shipped, and the services show how an engagement can be scoped. Bring the half page. From that, it is usually obvious whether the first version is a marketing site, a product, or a cleanup of something you already have.