Step-by-step guide to writing a clear, useful website brief: goals, audience, examples, budget, and success metrics. Reduces friction and improves outcomes for both sides.
A bad brief is the number one reason website projects fail.
Not technology. Not design. Not budget. The brief — or the lack of one.
A good brief produces better creative work, faster timelines, more accurate quotes, and fewer surprises at review stages. It also sets a tone of seriousness and organisation that makes an agency more confident in the client relationship before work begins.
Here's what a good brief includes.
Section 1: Business Context
Who are you, what do you do, and where is the business right now?
This isn't a marketing description — it's context for the agency. Include:
- What the business actually does (plain language, not marketing copy)
- Size of the business — team, revenue scale, geography
- Current stage — early growth, established, scaling, entering new markets?
- What's changing or what prompted this project?
The "what prompted this" question is often the most useful. "We're moving upmarket and our current site makes us look smaller than we are" tells an agency something fundamentally different from "we haven't redesigned since 2019 and it shows."
Section 2: Objectives
What do you want the new website to achieve? Be specific.
Vague objectives: "We want a better website."
Specific objectives:
- Increase qualified inbound enquiries by 30% within 6 months of launch
- Improve the conversion rate from homepage to contact page
- Establish credibility with enterprise clients we're targeting for the first time
- Enable our marketing team to publish content without development support
Each objective should ideally be measurable. If you're not sure what measurements to use, say so — a good agency will help define them. But the intention behind each goal should be clear.
Section 3: Audience
Who is the website for? Specifically.
Not "businesses of all sizes" — that's everyone, which is no one.
Define your primary audience: the person most likely to arrive on your website and become a client. Describe:
- Their role and seniority
- Their typical situation when they find you
- What they need to feel or believe to take the next step
- What doubts or objections they typically carry
If you serve multiple distinct audiences, prioritise. A website that tries to speak equally to everyone typically speaks effectively to no one.
Section 4: Scope
What pages and functionality do you need?
Include:
- List of pages required (homepage, services, about, case studies, blog, contact — plus any non-standard pages)
- CMS requirements (blog, case studies, team, job listings — whatever you're publishing regularly)
- Form and integration requirements (contact form, newsletter signup, CRM integration, booking tools)
- Any specific technical requirements (e-commerce, member areas, multi-language)
This section doesn't need to be exhaustive — the agency will help develop the full content model. But giving a starting list helps anchor the scope conversation.
Section 5: Brand Assets
What do you already have?
- Existing logo (what formats, whether you're happy with it)
- Brand guidelines (if they exist)
- Photography and video assets (quality, whether new assets are needed)
- Copy — who's writing it? You, the agency, a third party?
Content is the most common place projects stall. Being honest upfront about what you have and what you need to produce avoids the situation where a nearly-complete website waits three weeks for copy.
Section 6: References and Aesthetic Direction
This is one of the most practically useful sections in any brief.
Share 5–10 websites you like — and, crucially, explain what you like about each. Not necessarily competitors (though those can be useful), but sites that demonstrate visual direction, content structure, interaction style, or tone that resonates with you.
Also: sites you don't like, with notes on why.
This isn't asking the agency to copy anything. It's giving them a vocabulary for your aesthetic preferences that written descriptions can't fully convey.
Section 7: Budget and Timeline
Be honest about both.
Providing a budget range doesn't give the agency permission to spend it all — it helps them scope work that's realistic rather than theoretical. An agency that knows the budget is €25,000 will scope differently from one that doesn't know and defaults to either a €10,000 proposal (too thin) or a €60,000 one (too ambitious).
For timeline: what's driving it? A hard launch deadline (event, funding round, regulatory requirement) changes how a project is resourced. A flexible timeline allows for better work in some stages.
Section 8: Success Metrics
How will you know in 3 months whether the project worked?
Define 2–3 measurable indicators:
- Enquiry volume or quality
- Specific conversion rates
- Search visibility for target terms
- Time the marketing team spends on web maintenance
- Client feedback on first impression
These metrics shape decisions throughout the project — which features to prioritise, what to test first, how to set up analytics.
The Brief as a Relationship Signal
Beyond the practical information it contains, a detailed brief signals something important: this client takes the project seriously and has done the thinking.
Agencies allocate their best teams to clients who demonstrate organisational rigour. A thorough brief is a competitive advantage in the agency selection process — it shows the kind of partner you'll be.