Advice for your website
What a good brief changes for your website
Before discussing pages and design, ask the questions that will move your project forward.
Start with how it will be used
Who is your website for? What should visitors be able to do? The answer depends on your business and your customers’ needs.
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A useful brief describes a situation before choosing a solution. Write down who will use the website, what they need to find and what action they should be able to complete. For a service business, that may be understanding the offer and sending a relevant enquiry. For a shop, it may be finding a product and completing an order. These are objectives to discuss, not promised results.
Describe the problem you can observe
Replace “we need a more modern website” with a specific situation: the services are difficult to compare, the contact form is awkward on a phone, or the team cannot update its opening hours. Then define a check for each issue. Someone unfamiliar with your business should be able to find the relevant service and complete the intended action.
List what already exists
List the pages, documents, photos and forms you want to keep. Identify who can approve the content and who holds the website, hosting and domain access. Describe responsibilities in the brief; do not put passwords in it. If pages move during a redesign, include a review of the old and new addresses in the scope.
Separate the first release from later work
Distinguish what is essential for launch from what can follow. Record your budget range, the reason for your deadline and any dependencies, such as missing texts or access. Ask for a scope that separates design, content, development and ongoing support. A feature is easier to assess when the expected behaviour and the person who approves it are named.
A short fictional example
“Our company presents three services. On a phone, a visitor should be able to understand their differences and send us the relevant details. We want to keep our existing articles. Our office manager will approve the text. Online payment is outside the first release.”
This brief does not decide the entire design. It creates a starting point for agreeing the work, testing the visitor journey and deciding what happens after launch. Keep the brief up to date when the scope changes, with the decision and its owner recorded.
Sources and further reading
Further reading on two specific responsibilities: planning accessibility in a web project, and reviewing business content before publication. These references are not evidence of client performance.
Images and credits
The diagram above was created for this Oryon example; it contains no client data or photograph. For a third-party image, the review must check the right to use it, the required attribution, its source and relevant alternative text. A credit does not replace permission to use an image.
Illustrative text prepared for this presentation. It is not a client article, an actual client approval or a record of SEO results.