A well-prepared brief is the single most powerful tool for keeping your project on time, on budget, and on target. It gives our team a clear starting point and removes the back-and-forth that slows projects down. The good news is that a great brief does not need to be long — it needs to be clear, honest, and specific.
Start With Your Why
Before listing features or colour preferences, explain the business problem you are trying to solve. Are you launching a new business? Rebranding after a merger? Losing customers to competitors with better websites? The 'why' shapes every decision that follows and helps us recommend solutions you may not have considered.
Essential Elements to Include
- Business overview — what you do, who you serve, and what makes you different.
- Project goals — measurable outcomes like more leads, higher sales, or faster page loads.
- Target audience — demographics, behaviours, and pain points of the people you want to reach.
- Competitors — three to five competitors with notes on what you like or dislike about each.
- Scope — the specific deliverables you expect, and just as importantly, what is out of scope.
- Budget range — a realistic range helps us propose the right solution, not the wrong one.
- Timeline — any hard deadlines such as a launch event, financial year-end, or product release.
- Brand assets — existing logos, style guides, photography, and content you already have.
Be Honest About Constraints
Many clients are reluctant to share budget figures for fear of being overcharged. In our experience, the opposite is true — a transparent budget lets us design a solution that fits, rather than proposing something you cannot afford and then trimming it back painfully. The same applies to internal constraints: limited staff capacity, pending product changes, or regulatory approvals. Tell us early and we will plan around them.
What to Avoid
- Vague references like 'make it look modern' without examples of what 'modern' means to you.
- Treating Pinterest boards or competitor sites as a complete specification rather than inspiration.
- Hiding decision-makers from the briefing process — involve everyone who needs to sign off.
- Copying a brief from a previous project without updating it for current realities.
If you are unsure where to start, we provide a guided briefing template as part of our discovery process. Even a half-completed brief gives us enough to ask the right questions and fill in the gaps together. The goal is not a perfect document — it is a shared understanding that sets your project up for success from day one.
