What You Get
The Website Brief Template is a five-page PDF that takes you through everything a web designer needs to know before they can give you an accurate price. Fill it in once and send the same document to every company you ask. Each quote then prices the same pages and features, so you can put them side by side.
It is written for business owners, not designers. Every box has a short prompt and most have an example answer, so you are never looking at a blank page wondering what to put.
What Is Inside
The brief has ten sections:
- About your business: what you do, who for, and why customers pick you
- Why you want a website now, written as the problem rather than a list of features
- Goals, with a number you can check later, plus the things the site does not need to do
- Your customers: who visits, what they look for and the questions they ask before buying
- Pages and content, including who writes the words (the most common cause of delay)
- A tick-list of features and integrations, from quote forms and booking to payments and client logins
- Your current site, domain and search rankings, and who holds the logins
- Look and feel: sites you like, sites you don’t, and any brand rules
- Budget, timeline and who signs off
- After launch: who updates the site, who looks after hosting and security, and how you will check it is working
Who This Is For
Owners and managers of small and medium-sized UK businesses who are about to commission a new website or replace an old one. It works whether you plan to use a freelancer, an agency or us, and whether the budget is a few hundred pounds or several thousand.
How to Use This
Start with the sections on why you want a website and how you will measure it. They take the most thought and they shape everything else. Then work through the rest in one sitting, leaving gaps where you don’t know the answer yet. Thirty to sixty minutes is typical.
Before you send it anywhere, check one thing: that you, not a previous supplier, control the logins for your domain name. It is the hold-up we see most often on launch day, and it is far easier to sort out before a project starts. If the redesign replaces an existing site, our guide to planning a website redesign covers the audit and the redirects in more detail.
Once the brief is done, the Website Cost Checklist helps you check what each quote includes. If you would rather answer questions on screen than fill in a document, the Website Planner covers similar ground.
Why We Made This
When a website quote goes wrong, the brief was usually a two-line email. The agency had to guess, and the difference between the guess and what the client meant turns into extra invoices halfway through the project. This template asks the questions we would otherwise ask on a call, in the order that makes the answers useful.
Get the Template
Fill in the short form and the PDF opens straight away. We email you the link too, so you can find it again later. If you send us the finished brief, we’ll reply with a written quote for exactly what is on the page, or you can see how our small-business website works first. Everything else in the library is in resources.
