How to create a web design brief – template included!

1.2. Your current website

Explain why you’d like a new website. In relation to your current website, describe what works well and what you’d like to improve. If you have any performance stats or feedback from staff or customers relating to your current website it’ll help to share this.

1.3. Your goals for your new website

You should try and define what a successful new website would look like for your business. Our website planning blog post will help you with this – but a common goal is to sell more of your products and/or services.

1.4. Audience

Define the audience for your new website. Again, our how to plan your website post will help with this and includes some templates to help you define your customer personas. 

You should also describe what you want from your audiences as a result of them visiting your website. This could be an action like buying a product, filling out a form or sending an email. 

It’d also help if you can share any of the search phrases or keywords that your audiences use to find your current website.

Part 2: Inspiration and aesthetic

2.1. Competitors and aspirational brands

It’s really helpful if you can share some details of other brands in your industry. Looking at competitor websites can help an agency to identify industry trends and what works well or doesn’t in your sector. 

This is also a good opportunity to provide details of brands you admire; for their look, tone of voice, branding work, sense of style and fun, etc. These don’t have to be from your industry, but it will help if you can try and explain what you like or admire about them.

2.2. What do you like?

This can be a broad ask – but it will help your agency if you can try and communicate what you like in a website or design project. Let your creative juices flow and see what comes out. Examples could be:

I love blue and white

I prefer pastel colours

I like really bold and chunky fonts

I like a lot of colour 

I’m after something natural – lots of leafy greens and earthy browns

I love illustrations and animations

It’s a good idea to specify if there are any colours or styles you don’t like too!

You should also try and define what impression your website should give to visitors. Would you like your website to feel corporate or minimalist or retro or stylish etc. We’ve included a checklist in the template to help you with this.

Part 3: Content & structure

3.1. Website structure

What pages and features would you like to include in your website? 

Most websites have the following:

Home, About, Products/Services, Contact

However, is there anything else you would like, such as a blog, gallery, calendar, testimonials, FAQs etc.?

It’s more important to think about what you want rather than how it all fits together, as the web design agency will help you with this.

3.2. Written content

Who will provide the content for your website? Will it be written by someone in your business or do you need help with website copywriting? 

It’s a good idea to set out what you think you need and when this will be available, as content is a big part of designing a website.

3.3. Logos & graphics

It can help to list assets that will be useful for your website – logos, photos, videos etc. This will help the agency to identify if there are any gaps.

Part 4: Technical details

4.1. Brand identity

If you have any branding or identity documents you could share them at this stage. For more on this, check out How to incorporate your brand identity into your website design.

4.2. SEO

Share any high-level SEO work such as principal keywords used in your website. If you need help with SEO then you could raise this here also.

4.3. Hosting, CMS & support

You may not know all of the answers here, but share whatever you can. You should provide details of:

• Any hosting package you have in place.
• If you are already familiar with any content management systems.
• What ongoing support you think you might need after launch – particularly around managing website and content updates and troubleshooting.

4.4. Budget and deadlines

Communicate how much money you have to spend and when you’d like your new website delivered. It’s best to be as open as possible. If your budget is limited, are there elements that it’s more important to have now and others that could follow later? Also, if you’re aiming to have your website live for a specific launch or event you should provide dates. You may also like to consider breaking deadlines down into interim milestones rather than thinking about a singular end date.

Working with a web design agency 

If you’re new to working with a web design agency then a creative design brief will help. The brief can be used as a working document for any inception meetings you have and will help the design agency to generate a realistic quote for the work and identify how they can help you.

However, even at this stage (and beyond) things can still go wrong - to learn some of the most common pitfalls of working with web design agencies, and how to avoid them, check out 10 mistakes businesses make when hiring a web design agency or developer.

Working with QuayClick

We work closely with our clients, getting to know them and their businesses so that we can create websites they’ll love. If you need help with a new website project, we will happily review your creative design brief and provide you with a quote for the work.  If you’re interested in working with us, you can even try us out with a 100% free, no obligation mockup of your new website homepage - find out more about our free website mockups.