You’ve decided to build a new website and you’re hiring a web development agency—smart move. A custom website can transform your business, but success depends on one thing above all: a clear, comprehensive website brief. A strong brief gives your agency the context they need—your vision, priorities, technical requirements, and success metrics—so they can deliver on time and on budget.
A well-crafted brief reduces scope creep, prevents miscommunication, and speeds up development. It becomes the roadmap your team and the agency follow. Below is a practical, SEO-friendly guide to creating a website brief that sets your project up for success.
Determine your business goals for the website
Start with purpose. What do you want this website to achieve? Be specific and prioritize.
– Define primary goals: increase sales, generate leads, build brand awareness, improve customer support, or provide information.
– Specify target outcomes: X new leads per month, Y% increase in organic traffic, Z online sales in six months.
– Identify conversion actions: newsletter signups, contact form submissions, bookings, phone calls, or e-commerce checkouts.
– Choose success metrics (KPIs): sessions, conversion rate, average session duration, bounce rate, revenue, and qualified leads.
Clear goals guide content, design, and technical choices. Share these targets with your agency so they can recommend the best UX, analytics setup, and conversion optimization strategies.
Outline your target audiences and buyer personas
Next, clarify who you’re building the site for. Define target audiences and create buyer personas to humanize them.
– Target audiences: demographics and segments (e.g., local consumers, small business owners, teachers, enterprise clients).
– Buyer personas: give each persona a name, role, motivations, pain points, preferred channels, and decision-making triggers. Include location, age range, job title, and typical budget when relevant.
For example: “Jenna, a busy mom in her 30s who values convenience and affordability,” or “Mark, a high school teacher looking for interactive lesson tools with limited funding.” These insights help the agency tailor messaging, design, and funnels that resonate and convert.
Provide detailed content requirements and copy guidance
List every page and section you expect—and what should live on each.
– Core pages: Home, About, Services/Products, Pricing, Blog/Resources, Contact, FAQs, Legal (Privacy + Terms).
– Service/product subpages: one page per offering with benefits, features, pricing, and CTAs.
– Page details: desired headings, page-level objectives, key messages, and example copy or tone guidance.
– Media needs: imagery, video, icons, and examples of preferred visual style. Specify image sizes, aspect ratios, and any brand-approved media.
– Calls to action: what you want visitors to do on each page (e.g., “Book demo,” “Request quote,” “Download whitepaper”).
– SEO targets: provide 3–5 priority keywords or phrases per important page, plus suggested long-tail variations and related semantic terms.
The more specific you are about content and keywords, the faster the copy, SEO, and information architecture work will move. Provide any existing content or outlines; if you expect the agency to create copy, state that clearly and include tone and voice examples.
Specify design preferences and brand guidelines
Design translates your brand into an experience. Share rules and examples to keep the look consistent.
– Brand colors: primary, secondary, and accent colors and where each should be used. Note color combinations to avoid.
– Typography: preferred fonts for headings, body text, and CTAs, plus sizes and weight recommendations.
– Imagery and iconography: examples of photography styles, illustration types, and icon shapes (flat, rounded, line-based). Provide access to your image library if available.
– Layout and spacing: preferences for white space, card vs. full-width designs, and grid structure if known.
– Tone and personality: professional, playful, authoritative, warm—provide sample microcopy for CTAs and headlines.
– Accessibility: specify color contrast, font sizes, and alt text standards to meet WCAG guidelines if accessibility is a priority.
Including a brand style guide (even a simple one) saves design rounds and keeps the site on-brand from day one.
Define technical specifications and functionality needs
Be explicit about the features and tech stack so the agency scopes the build correctly.
– CMS choice: WordPress, Drupal, Shopify, headless CMS (Contentful, Strapi), or a custom CMS. Note must-have CMS features and editing permissions.
– E-commerce: product catalog size, payment gateways, inventory sync, shipping rules, product variations, and tax handling.
– Integrations: CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce), email marketing (Mailchimp, Klaviyo), marketing automation, payment processors, booking systems, and third-party APIs.
– Responsive design: confirm mobile-first or responsive approach and any special mobile functionality.
– Performance and SEO: page speed targets, schema markup, meta tag templates, canonicalization, XML sitemaps, and robots rules.
– Security and compliance: SSL, GDPR/CCPA consent flows, data retention policies, and user authentication needs.
– Analytics and tracking: Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager, conversion tracking, and desired event tracking.
– Advanced features: chatbots, member portals, booking engines, multilingual support, search filters, and personalized content.
If you’re unsure about the best platform or solution, ask the agency for recommendations and tradeoffs—cost, time to build, scalability, and maintenance implications.
Outline sitemap, UX flows, and technical architecture
A visual sitemap and basic user flows help everyone understand structure and navigation.
– Provide or request a sitemap showing main pages, subpages, and content relationships.
– Define user journeys for key tasks (e.g., product discovery to purchase, lead capture flow).
– Note any approval workflows for publishing content or user role permissions.
These deliverables reduce guesswork and speed up wireframing and prototyping phases.
Set timeline, budget, and maintenance expectations
Clarity around budget and schedule prevents surprises.
– Project milestones: discovery, design, development, testing, launch, and post-launch support.
– Timeline: desired launch date and any hard deadlines (product launches, events).
– Budget range: give realistic numbers or bands for design, development, and ongoing maintenance.
– Post-launch: define who handles hosting, updates, backups, security patches, and content edits. Specify SLA expectations for support and bug fixes.
Agencies can tailor proposals and recommend phased development if budget constraints exist.
Include legal, administrative, and access information
Make handoffs smooth by listing what the agency needs from you.
– Domain and hosting credentials, current CMS logins, analytics accounts, and third-party service access.
– Legal copy or policies that must appear on the site (privacy policy, terms of use, accessibility statement).
– Primary contact person, decision-makers, and review process for approvals.
Keep communication lines and responsibilities clear to avoid delays.
Wrap-up and next steps
A great website brief saves time and money and leads to a site that truly reflects your business goals. To recap, your brief should include:
– Clear business goals and KPIs
– Target audiences and detailed buyer personas
– Complete content plan with SEO targets
– Brand guidelines and design preferences
– Technical requirements and integrations
– Sitemap, user flows, timeline, and budget
– Administrative access and legal needs
If you prefer, use a template to collect this information or schedule a discovery meeting with your agency to walk through these sections together. A short, focused workshop can often uncover details you might overlook on your own.
Start drafting your brief today—give your agency the clarity they need and you’ll get a website that performs, scales, and aligns with your brand.
