A website design brief is a short document that tells a designer or developer what you’re building, who it’s for, what it needs to do and what you’ll provide. A good one lets an agency give you a fixed quote without a string of calls. A vague one gets you a wide estimate, or a quote padded to cover the unknowns.
You don’t need design skills to write one. You need clear answers to about a dozen questions, a list of pages, a few example sites you like, and honesty about your budget range and deadline. This guide walks through each section, with a template you can copy at the end.
We read a lot of briefs, and the ones that price fastest share the same habit. They describe outcomes and content, then leave the technical choices to the developer.
Why the brief decides your quote
Developers price risk. When a brief says “a modern website with a blog and maybe a shop,” the person quoting has to guess how many pages, who writes the copy, what the shop sells and which systems it talks to. Every guess gets a buffer added.
A clear brief removes those guesses. It also gives you a fair way to compare quotes, because every agency is pricing the same scope. If one quote is far below the rest, you can check what they left out.
What to put in a website design brief
Work through these eleven sections in order. Short answers are fine, as long as they’re specific.
1. About your business
Write two or three sentences on what you sell, who buys it and where. Add your main competitors and what makes you different. This helps the designer pitch the tone and structure right.
2. Goals for the site
Say what the site has to do in plain terms: book calls, sell products, collect quote requests, recruit staff or support existing customers. Pick one main goal and up to two secondary ones. If you track numbers now, such as monthly leads from the site, include them so the new build has a baseline.
3. Audience
Describe the two or three types of visitor you expect and what each one wants to find. A homeowner looking for an emergency plumber behaves differently from a facilities manager comparing contractors. They might need different pages.
4. Pages and sitemap
List every page you expect, grouped by section. Something like this:
- Home
- About, team and careers
- Services, with one page per service
- Locations or service areas, if you serve several cities
- Blog or resources
- Contact, quote form and booking
Page count is one of the biggest drivers of cost, so be specific. If you’re unsure, list what you have now and mark the pages you’d like to add.
5. Features and functions
List the things the site needs to do beyond showing content. For each one, note any tool you already use.
- Forms, and where submissions go (email, HubSpot or a Google Sheet)
- Booking, with your calendar tool, such as Calendly or Acuity Scheduling
- An online store, with a rough product count and your payment provider
- Member logins or client portals
- Multiple languages
- Connections to your CRM, email platform or accounting software
Features that connect to other systems take the most time to scope, so name the system and say what data should move between them.
6. Content: who writes and supplies it
This is where many projects stall. Say who will write the page copy, who supplies photos and video, and if you’d like help with either one. If you have brand guidelines, a logo file and fonts, list them. If you don’t, say so, and branding can be quoted as a separate line.
7. Design direction
Share three to five websites you like and say what you like about each one: the layout, the colors, how the menu works or the way products are shown. Add one or two you don’t like. Links with notes help a designer far more than words like “clean” or “modern.”
8. Platform and hosting
If you prefer WordPress, Shopify, Webflow or a custom build, say so and why. If you don’t have a preference, say that too and let the developer recommend one. Note your current domain registrar and host, and who has the logins. Missing access is one of the most common causes of launch delays.
9. SEO and existing traffic
If your current site gets search traffic, the new one has to keep it. Ask for a redirect plan from old URLs to new ones and a check of titles, meta descriptions and page speed before launch. Mention any local areas or keywords you want to rank for.
10. Budget range and deadline
Give a range. It feels risky, but it lets the developer suggest what fits instead of quoting a version you can’t afford. Add a target launch date and say whether it’s fixed, like a trade show, or flexible.
11. Who approves the work
Name the person who signs off on designs and copy. Projects with one decision-maker move faster than ones that need a committee. Say how you’d like to give feedback too, whether that’s comments on a staging link, a shared document or a weekly email, so nobody waits on a reply.
Mistakes that make a brief hard to price
Most pricing problems trace back to one of these gaps.
- Listing features without saying what they’re for. “We need a portal” could mean a shared folder or a full customer account system.
- Leaving content ownership open. Copywriting can take a big share of the effort on a small site.
- Asking for everything in phase one. Split nice-to-haves into a second phase so the first one ships.
- Skipping the current site. Point to what works and what doesn’t on the site you have now.
- Forgetting access details. The developer needs to know who controls the domain, hosting and analytics.
A website brief template you can copy
Paste this into a document and fill in each line. One or two pages is enough for most small business sites.
- Business summary: what you sell, to whom and where
- Main goal and up to two secondary goals
- Visitor types and what each one needs
- Page list, grouped by section
- Features, with the tools you use now
- Content: who writes copy, who supplies images, which brand assets exist
- Three to five reference sites, with notes
- Platform preference, current domain and host, and who holds the logins
- SEO needs: redirects, target keywords and service areas
- Budget range and launch date
- Decision-maker and how feedback will be given
What happens after you send it
A good developer will come back with written questions before giving a number. Expect them to suggest cuts or a phased plan if the scope and budget don’t match. The proposal you get should list pages, features, deliverables, the timeline and what you’re responsible for.
At IST, you can send your brief by email, WhatsApp or our forms, with no sales call needed. You’ll get a written proposal with a fixed scope and price, and you review staged work before anything goes live.
Before you write it, try the website cost calculator to get a rough sense of scope, then look at our website design and development service. If you run a smaller business, our small business websites page covers the usual starting scope, and our guide to what a Claude-coded website is explains the faster build option we offer.
