A useful brief describes who the customer is, what decision you want them to make, the constraints that cannot move, and what success looks like six months out. It does not describe the design. Briefs that specify appearance and omit outcomes produce work that looks like the reference sites and performs like nothing in particular.
What a brief is actually for
A brief is not a specification handed down to be executed. It is the transfer of everything you know about your customers and your market into the hands of people who will make hundreds of small decisions on your behalf over the following weeks.
Every one of those decisions, from which service leads the homepage to whether the phone number sits in the header, is easy when the brief is clear about who is arriving and why. When it is not, those decisions get made on aesthetic instinct, and the result is a site that photographs well and converts poorly.
The six things worth writing down
Who the customer is, in specifics
Not "homeowners in the Lower Mainland". Closer to "homeowners in older houses who have just discovered a problem, are calling three companies this afternoon, and have never hired anyone in this trade before". The second version tells a designer what has to be on the page. The first does not.
The decision you want them to make
Call now, request a quote, book a slot, or download something and think about it. These produce genuinely different pages. A site trying to do all four at once does none of them, and the choice belongs to you rather than to whoever is building it.
What makes you the right choice
The honest version, not the marketing version. Twenty-two years in one trade, a genuine same-day guarantee, work in a specialty nobody else locally touches. If the answer is "we do good work and care about customers", that is a strategy conversation to have before the build, not a line to put on a page.
The constraints that cannot move
Launch dates tied to a season, a booking system you already pay for, brand colours from vehicle wraps, an existing domain, a franchise agreement. Constraints surfaced at the start shape the design. Constraints surfaced in week six cause rework, and rework is where budgets and goodwill go.
What success looks like
Stated as an outcome with a timeframe. More quote requests for commercial work, fewer phone calls asking questions the site should have answered, a booking rate that does not collapse on mobile. Without this the project can only be judged on whether people liked the look of it.
What you already have
Photography, testimonials, certifications, warranty details, existing copy, a customer list. Most businesses hold more usable material than they think and mention it in week four, after something has been written to fill the gap it would have filled better.
Using reference sites properly
Sending three sites you admire is genuinely useful, provided you say what you admire about each one. "I like this" is close to useless. "I like that you can tell in two seconds what they do and where they work" is a design instruction.
It is equally worth sending one site you dislike and saying why. Knowing that a competitor's stock photography reads as impersonal to you rules out an entire direction before anyone spends time on it.
What to hand over on day one
- Domain registrar access, or confirmation of who holds it. This causes more launch delays than any other single item.
- Existing hosting details, including where email is currently handled, which is the part that breaks if it is discovered late.
- Google Business Profile and analytics access, so nothing is rebuilt from zero and history is preserved.
- Logo files in vector format if they exist, along with brand colours and fonts already in use on vehicles or signage.
- Photography, even the imperfect phone pictures. Real work beats stock, and a good builder will tell you which ones are usable.
- Legal and insurance details that need to appear, such as licence numbers, warranty terms, or service area limits.
Gathering this takes an afternoon and removes the most common source of delay. If you are not sure who holds your domain, that question alone is worth resolving before anything else, and the reasoning is set out in who owns your website.
How you can tell the brief was understood
A firm that has read the brief properly will play it back to you before quoting, usually in a form you did not write. They will ask what happens when the phone is not answered. They will ask which service is most profitable rather than most common, because those are frequently different and the homepage should lead with the profitable one.
They will also push back on something. A brief that survives first contact untouched has usually not been read closely, since most briefs contain at least one assumption worth challenging. That challenge is the part you are paying for.
Where a brief cannot be written because the answers do not exist yet, the honest move is to resolve that first. It is a short piece of work and it is the difference between a build that runs to schedule and one that circles through revisions while everybody tries to decide what the business stands for.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a website brief be?
Two pages is usually plenty. Length is not the point; specificity is. A short brief that names the customer, the desired action, and the real differentiator is more useful than ten pages describing preferred colours.
Should I tell an agency my budget?
Yes. Withholding it does not produce a better price, it produces a proposal aimed at the wrong project. A stated range lets a firm design something that fits it, and lets you find out early if the scope you want is not affordable yet.
What if I do not know what I want the site to look like?
That is normal and not a problem. Appearance is the part a designer is equipped to solve. What cannot be solved on your behalf is who the customer is, what you want them to do, and why they should choose you.
Who should be involved in writing the brief?
Whoever speaks to customers most, which in a small business is often not the owner. The person answering the phone knows which questions come up every time, and those questions are the outline of your service pages.
How much detail should I give about competitors?
Enough to be useful. Who you lose work to, what they say that you do not, and where you win when you win. That comparison shapes positioning more directly than any amount of description of your own services.
What happens if requirements change mid-project?
Some change is normal and a professional arrangement accommodates it through a stated change process. What causes problems is not change itself but constraints that existed all along and were never mentioned, since those force rework rather than adjustment.
West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.
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