Website Brief: A Template the Business Owner Fills In Alone

You sent three agencies the same message: “We need a new website, how much will it cost?” A week later you have three answers. One agency asks for the price of a used car, the second fits into the budget of a team party, and the third sent a forty-question form and is waiting. You can’t compare these quotes, because each contractor filled in the gaps of what you’re ordering on their own. One pictured a single-screen landing page, another an online shop with customer accounts.

A brief exists for exactly this moment. It’s a few pages where you explain in your own words what the business is, who the website is for and what a visitor should do on it. Without a brief, the contractor prices their own guesses. With a brief, they price your actual task. Below: what to include, a ready template and a way to lay three quotes side by side.

So the examples don’t hang in the air, one fictional company runs through the whole article: “Perimeter”, which sells and installs video surveillance and access control for warehouses, offices and residential complexes. The company is made up, the situations are typical.

People often confuse these two documents, and as a result the owner either writes a technical specification they don’t know how to write, or writes nothing at all, because “the spec is the developer’s job”.

A brief answers the question “what and why”. The client writes it, in business language, without technical terms. A technical specification answers the question “how exactly”. It’s usually put together by the contractor or an analyst based on the brief and the follow-up discussions, and it becomes part of the contract.

If you’re looking for a “website spec” to bring to a contractor, what you most likely need is a brief. The normal order goes like this: you write the brief, the contractor asks follow-up questions, together you arrive at the technical specification, and that specification is what you sign. If a contractor is ready to start without a spec, working “from the brief” alone, at least agree on a written list of pages and features. Otherwise you’ll have nothing to compare the finished work against.

A conversation in a messenger disappears: a month later nobody remembers whether you agreed on an English version or who was supposed to take the photos. A written brief becomes the project’s shared memory.

The main rule: write so the text can’t be read two ways. All three contractors will read “modern design” differently. “We want the homepage to look calm, like a bank’s website, not like a concert poster” is already clear. Every ambiguity in a brief later turns into a round of revisions, and rounds of revisions turn into time and money.

You don’t have to write it perfectly. An honest “don’t know, please advise” is more useful than a made-up answer: the contractor sees where their expertise is needed.

The first section explains who you are. Not the company history since the year it was founded, but what helps an outsider understand the business in five minutes.

What to write:

• what you do, in one sentence your mom would understand;
• your main products or services, and which of them matter most for revenue;
• how you differ from competitors, honestly, not “quality and an individual approach”;
• geography: a city, a country, several countries;
• plans for the next year or two: new lines of business, new markets, an online shop.

Bad: “Perimeter is a reliable security partner with many years of experience.” Good: “We sell and install video surveillance and access control. Most of the money comes from warehouses and residential complexes; private houses are about a quarter of orders. What sets us apart is our own service after installation. Within a year we plan to sell equipment online.”

Plans matter even when they’re vague: if a shop appears in a year, the contractor will build a structure that can carry it.

If you have several lines of business, add who on your side is responsible for each one. Otherwise the contractor’s questions drown in a shared chat.

Here you describe the scope of the work. The contractor needs to know a few things.

New website or redesign. If you already have a site, share the link and write what works for you and what doesn’t. Redesigning a live site that gets traffic needs special attention to page URLs and redirects, otherwise you can lose search rankings. Ask the contractor up front how they plan to move the old pages so their traffic isn’t lost.

What you already have. A vector logo, brand colors and fonts, a brand book, photos, copy, videos, certificates, customer reviews. List them and say where they are.

What’s not in the project. This point is the one people skip most often, even though it’s the cheapest protection against disputes. “We’re not redrawing the logo”, “we’re not setting up ads”, “we write the copy ourselves” settles questions before the estimate is even made.

How much time you’re ready to give the project. Do you want to see every intermediate mockup, or just the key milestones? Who on your side answers questions, and how quickly? The contractor plans the work around this answer.

Style. Describe in words what associations the site should evoke, and give examples (more on those below). For Perimeter that might be “technical, calm, no military look and no black and red, because we’re not a security firm from the movies.”

A website without a goal turns into a business card nobody opens. Put into words why you need it and, above all, what the person who lands on it should do.

Typical goals: get leads, sell online, explain a complex product before a call with sales, collect subscriptions, give customers documentation, hire people. Pick one main goal and a few secondary ones. If you have five main goals, you have none.

For Perimeter the main goal could sound like this: “get requests for a free site visit by an engineer from warehouses and residential complexes.” The visitor’s action: fill in a short form or send a message in a messenger. Secondary goal: existing customers find manuals and service contacts and don’t call the sales team about it.

If you have an old website, write what worked on it and what didn’t: where the leads came from, what customers complained about.

And agree on measurement right away. Today the standard for most websites is Google Analytics 4. What used to be called “goals” and “conversions” is now called key events in GA4: a submitted form, a tap on the phone number, a completed order. In the brief it’s enough to write which actions you want to count. Setting them up is the contractor’s job, and it’s better if that’s in the list of work rather than “somehow, later”.

Classic questionnaires ask for the audience’s age, gender and income. For a website it matters more what situation a person is in when they arrive, and what they need to feel ready for the next step.

Describe two or three types of visitors using this pattern: who they are, what problem they’re solving, what worries them, what they want to see on the site.

For Perimeter it could look like this:

• Warehouse or logistics manager. Problem: reduce theft and keep the premises under control. Worries about: downtime during installation, compatibility with existing cameras. Wants to see: similar sites, timelines, how the service works.
• Manager of a residential complex or homeowners’ association. Problem: an intercom and cameras for the entrances, agreed with the residents. Worries about: budget, monthly fees, who will maintain it. Wants to see: a clear price per entrance, or at least how it’s calculated, and documents for the residents’ meeting.

If you don’t know who your customers are, write down the questions people bring to your sales staff. That’s already half the section.

There are two separate lists here, and you shouldn’t mix them.

Competitors. Three to five companies your customers compare you with. Not just the biggest players on the market, but the ones people actually go to when they don’t come to you. Next to each one, write what they do well and what you’d like to do differently.

Example websites. Sites from any industry that you like. And here’s the main rule of the brief: a link without an explanation is almost useless. The contractor will read “we like site X” as “copy site X”, when you may have meant only the handy calculator on one page.

Write it like this:

• “Site X: we like that prices are visible right on the service page, with no ‘ask our manager’.”
• “Site Y: we like how the work stages are shown, step by step with timelines. We don’t like the colors and fonts.”
• “Site Z: we like the mobile version, the contact button is always under your thumb.”

Add an anti-example too: a website you definitely don’t like, and why.

This section is the closest to a technical specification, but you should still write it in business language. Not “REST API integration”, but “requests from the website must land in our CRM, we use such and such.”

What to list:

• Structure and pages. Which sections you need: services, prices, case studies, about the company, blog, contacts. You don’t have to know the final structure, but a rough list of pages affects the price a lot. How to plan the menu and structure so people don’t get lost is covered in the article on website navigation.
• Features. Request form, calculator, catalog, filters, cart, customer account, booking, live chat.
• Integrations. Online payment (which payment provider), CRM, delivery services, accounting system, newsletters, messengers. Name the services you already use.
• For a shop. Roughly how many products, what variants they have (size, color, configuration), where prices and stock levels come from, whether you need promo codes, how shipping is calculated.
• Languages. Which languages, and whether every page gets translated. Check the language requirements of the countries where you sell. For example, in Ukraine, since 16.07.2022 the website of a company selling to Ukrainians must have a Ukrainian version that loads by default, as the Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language explains. Other language versions can sit next to it. Google recommends giving each language version its own URL and not redirecting people automatically based on a guess about their language. That’s how our own site works: Ukrainian lives under /ua/, German under /de/, English has no prefix, and visitors switch the language themselves in the header.
• Brand identity. If you already have a visual identity and it needs to stay, hand over the originals: the vector logo, color codes, font files or their names, the brand book. A screenshot of the logo from Instagram is not an original.

Perimeter should also mention the unusual things here: a section with camera manuals in PDF, and a form where you can attach a floor plan of the premises.

Projects “with no deadline” are rare, and they usually drag on forever. Write when you need the website and why exactly then: a trade fair, the season, an ad campaign launch, the end of the contract with your old contractor.

Distinguish a hard deadline from a preferred one. “By March 1, because the ad campaign starts” is hard. “Ideally by spring” is preferred. The contractor will plan the work differently.

And build your own time into the schedule. In practice, website projects get delayed less often in development than while waiting for copy, photos, approvals and access. A mockup that waits two weeks for your comment pushes the launch back by the same two weeks.

A promise to build a shop with integrations in a few days usually means either a template with no customization, or slipping deadlines after the prepayment.

Many owners don’t state a budget because they’re afraid the contractor will “stretch” the price to the number named. In practice, a brief without a budget gets you three quotes based on three different ideas of the project, and once again you can’t compare them.

A range is enough: “we’re planning between X and Y.” That way the contractor can propose a solution that fits your money, not their imagination. With a tighter budget, for example, they might suggest building some pages from standard blocks and doing custom design only for the homepage and the service page.

One common misconception: “a small budget means a CMS or a website builder, a large one means custom development.” Almost any site the owner wants to update themselves needs a content management system (CMS), and both simple and very large sites run on WordPress or other CMSs. The budget determines the amount of custom design, the number of features and integrations, and the depth of preparation far more than whether there’s a CMS at all.

Ask the contractor to list post-launch costs as a separate line: hosting, domain, licenses, maintenance. What affects the cost of development is shown on our websites and online shops service page.

One of the most useful jobs of a brief is to agree on what you’ll get at the end. Besides design and code, that’s copy, photos, translations, analytics and a guide for your team.

Spell out who is responsible for what:

• Copy. Are you writing it, is the contractor, is a separate copywriter? If it’s you, then when? A website without copy can’t be launched, and you can’t properly judge the design either.
• Photos and video. Do you have your own photos of completed jobs, do you need to organize a shoot, or will you use stock for now?
• Translations. Who translates and who checks.
• SEO at launch. Do you expect the pages to be prepared for search at a basic level: headings, descriptions, clear URLs, redirects from the old site?
• Training. Do you need a short guide or a session so your team can add news and change prices on their own?

The sitemap is often talked about as a must-have item. In fact, Google writes that a small site (up to about 500 pages that should appear in search) with good internal linking may not need one, though in most cases a sitemap is useful. Most modern CMSs generate it automatically, so it’s not a separate expensive line in the estimate, just a checkbox in the acceptance checklist.

At the end, list once more everything that has to be handed over: that’s the list you’ll use to accept the work.

The last section is the most boring and probably the most important in the long run.

Write down who buys the domain and hosting. The most reliable option: the domain and hosting are registered to your company and your email address, and the contractor gets access to do the work. If everything is registered to the contractor, the website effectively belongs to them, and if you part ways, getting your access back can be very painful. What exactly you should keep on your side is covered in the article “The contractor disappeared. Who controls your website now?”.

If you already have a domain, company email or hosting, list them and say who has access. Don’t put the passwords themselves in the brief: the brief gets forwarded to several companies, and access is handed to the chosen contractor separately, in a secure way.

And agree on life after launch: updates, backups, small edits, response to breakdowns, and how much it costs per month. If you buy hosting yourself, ask the contractor to confirm the plan is suitable.

Below is a ready template. Answer briefly, in your own words. Where you don’t know, write “don’t know” or “please advise”.

1. Business and product - What does the company do (one or two sentences)? - Which products or services are the main source of revenue? - How are you different from competitors? - Where do you operate: a city, a country, several countries? - What plans for the next year or two might affect the website?

2. Target audience - Who are your main customers (2-3 types)? - What problem does each one solve, and what worries them before buying? - What questions do customers ask most often?

3. Website goal and visitor action - Why do you need the website (one main goal)? - What should a visitor do: send a request, call, buy, subscribe, send a messenger message? - Which actions do you want to count in analytics? - If you already have a site: the link, what works, what doesn’t?

4. Competitors and example websites - 3-5 competitors: links and what’s good or bad about them. - 3-5 websites you like: links and what exactly you like. - 1-2 websites you don’t like, and why.

5. Structure and pages - Which sections do you need (services, prices, case studies, about us, blog, contacts, other)? - Roughly how many service or product pages? - What’s most important to show on the homepage?

6. Content - Who writes the copy? When will it be ready? - Do you have your own photos and videos? Do you need a shoot? - Do you have a vector logo, a brand book, brand colors and fonts?

7. Features and integrations - Which features do you need: form, calculator, catalog, cart, customer account, booking, chat? - Online payment: needed or not, which provider? - CRM, accounting, delivery, newsletters: which services do you already use?

8. Languages - Which languages do you need? - Are all pages translated or only some? - Who translates and who checks?

9. Domain, hosting, access - Do you have a domain, and who is it registered to? - Do you have hosting, company email? - Who will buy whatever is missing? - Do you need support after launch, and how much?

10. Budget and timeline - Budget range for development. - Budget for monthly costs after launch. - Preferred and hard launch date, and what it’s tied to.

11. Who makes the decisions - Who is the contact person on your side? - Who approves the design, copy, budget? - How many people take part in approvals? - What is definitely not part of this project?

The last block is not a formality. When a manager approves the mockup and then the owner shows up at the end with “redo everything”, that’s the most expensive revision in the whole project.

Even a filled-in template can fail. Here’s what happens most often:

1. Generic words instead of facts. “Modern”, “stylish”, “user-friendly”, “for a broad audience” tell the contractor nothing. Replace each of those words with an example.
2. Links without explanations. A list of ten nice websites with no comments forces the contractor to guess what matters to you.
3. No goal, or seven of them. A website that sells, hires, entertains, teaches and collects subscriptions all at once usually does none of it well.
4. No budget. Quotes arrive in different “weight classes”, and you end up comparing things that can’t be compared.
5. Content “later”. The design is drawn for imaginary copy, and the real copy breaks it.
6. Passwords right in the brief. The document is sent to several contractors, and the access details end up in other people’s inboxes.
7. A brief like a forty-page questionnaire. If nobody reads the document to the end, the important parts get lost.

When three contractors get one and the same brief, you can finally lay their quotes side by side. Don’t look only at the final number. Make a simple table and fill it in for each quote.

People underrate the last row. A contractor who read the brief carefully usually comes back with follow-up questions: “what about manuals for your customers?”, “where do the equipment prices come from?” No questions at all is information too, and not always good information.

For Perimeter, the table might show that the cheapest quote doesn’t include redirects from the old site, and the most expensive one added a photo shoot nobody asked for. The conversation about price immediately gets concrete. How to evaluate the contractor themselves, their portfolio and contract, is covered in the companion article how to choose a website developer.

You don’t need a finished brief for your first message. A few sentences are enough for first contact: what the business is, what needs to be done and by when. For example, the form on our contact page has only three fields: name, email and message. You’ll need the full brief at the next step, when you’re talking about a specific quote.

If you already have a website and you’re not sure what’s wrong with it, it helps to start with a review of where it stands now. For that we have a free website check: you can put its findings into the brief section about your old site.

A website brief doesn’t require technical knowledge. It requires honest answers to simple questions: who you are, who you sell to, what a person should do on the site, who writes the copy, how much money and time there is, and who has the final say. The contractor will write the technical specification later, but it’s the brief that determines whether that spec is about your task.

Fill in the template, even if half the fields say “don’t know”. A document like that already gives contractors the same starting point, and lets you compare quotes rather than prices for different ideas of a website. If you’d like to talk through your brief, or just start with a few sentences, write to us.