How to write a website brief an agency can act on

Begin with what changed in the business

The first page of a website brief should explain why the project exists now. Has the company entered a new market, changed its offer, outgrown its visual identity, or found that its current publishing system cannot support the work? State the change in ordinary language. An agency should not have to infer the business problem from a mood board.

Use this prompt: “We currently ___, but over the next period we need to ___. The website matters because ___.” Add the consequence of doing nothing. That consequence may be continued confusion, time spent assembling separate sales materials, or an inability to present new work well. Avoid turning uncertain commercial outcomes into promised returns.

Hypothetical example: “We are an independent hospitality group opening our first property outside our home region. Our current site assumes visitors already know us. The new site must introduce the group’s point of view and help visitors distinguish the properties.” That context gives the team a useful strategic question before anyone starts drawing a homepage.

Describe people through the decisions they face

“Our audience is affluent professionals” tells a team little about the experience to design. Add the visitor’s situation, knowledge, hesitation, and next decision. Someone comparing a destination for a wedding needs different information from a returning guest looking for a booking link, even when both belong to the same demographic group.

Try these prompts: “They arrive because ___.” “They already understand ___.” “They need to establish ___ before they are comfortable contacting us.” “The most common reason they decide against us is ___.” Separate direct evidence from internal opinion.

GOV.UK’s user-needs guidance distinguishes a person’s underlying problem from a proposed solution. Apply that distinction here. “Visitors need to understand the difference between our services” is a need; “we need an animated comparison slider” is one possible response.

Identify a primary audience and describe how secondary audiences will be served. If every audience receives equal priority, the homepage brief becomes an unresolved negotiation. The design team can help resolve that tension, but it needs to know the tension exists.

Define useful outcomes and the evidence behind them

Choose a small number of outcomes the website can reasonably influence. These might include better informed enquiries, easier discovery of relevant work, clearer recruitment information, or faster publication of new content. Then explain how your team would recognize improvement.

Complete: “We will consider this useful if ___.” Follow with: “Our current evidence is ___, and its limitations are ___.” A sales team might track whether enquiries reference the right service. An editor might measure whether a new project can be published without outside help. Both are more actionable than an unsupported demand to double conversions.

Include available research, analytics definitions, recurring customer questions, and examples of misunderstandings. If the evidence does not exist, say so. “We have never tested whether buyers understand the difference between these services” is a productive discovery question.

Do not ask the agency to guarantee an outcome controlled by pricing, demand, sales response, and other factors beyond the site. Ask it to explain how the proposed work should contribute, what assumptions support that explanation, and how those assumptions will be tested.

Scope the content as carefully as the interface

A list of pages is useful, but it leaves major questions unanswered. Specify the kinds of content the site contains: projects, services, people, locations, articles, downloads, or products. Describe how these relate. A project connected to several services and locations is a different editorial problem from an isolated page with a title and image.

For each content type, fill in: “We have approximately ___ existing items. Their quality is ___. We expect to add ___, with ___ responsible for drafting and ___ responsible for approval.” Approximate quantities are acceptable if they are clearly estimates.

Name the work included in the engagement: writing, editing, photography, image selection, migration, translation, and document cleanup. Say which material is ready and which depends on other people. Content availability can determine the design schedule, so avoid describing it as something that will simply arrive later.

Also identify what editors must be able to change after launch. Ask for a publishing experience that supports real tasks, such as adding a project with a short case study, rather than requesting unlimited flexibility without defining who will use it.

Give references a reason

Share a small set of references and explain what each demonstrates. You may admire the photographic direction of one site, the clarity of another, and the confidence of a third. These are separate observations. Asking an agency to “make ours like this” can accidentally import another company’s strategy along with its styling.

Complete three statements: “We want to feel ___ because ___.” “We must remain ___ because ___.” “We should avoid ___ because ___.” The reasons make the adjectives usable. “Quiet” might mean generous reading space and a measured voice; it should not automatically mean low-contrast text or hidden navigation.

Include existing brand assets and describe their status. A brand guideline may be mandatory, provisional, or already under review. Tell the agency where it can interpret and where it needs approval. If the logo is fixed but the digital typography is open, state that explicitly. Creative freedom works better when its boundaries are visible and connected to business reasons.

Make the working arrangement explicit

State the available investment range, desired launch date, and the event or dependency behind that date. Distinguish a fixed deadline from a preferred one. Include required integrations, hosting constraints, languages, and any internal review process the team must accommodate.

Specify accessibility as a delivery responsibility with a target and evaluation approach. W3C’s planning guidance treats accessibility as work that belongs throughout production and ongoing management. Your brief should therefore identify who owns evaluation, remediation, and later content practices.

Name one person who can consolidate feedback and one who makes final decisions. List specialist reviewers, such as operations or technical staff, and the decisions they own. A long stakeholder list without clear authority creates uncertainty rather than collaboration.

Finally, describe the handover you need: accounts, source files, documentation, editorial training, and support. “The marketing team should independently publish ordinary updates” is a useful operating requirement. It allows the agency to propose an appropriate system and price the training required to make that independence real.

Use these seven prompts to begin the conversation

You do not need a finished specification to make a useful first inquiry. Answer these prompts in plain language, and mark anything you do not yet know:

1. What changed? Describe the business reason for considering the project now.
2. Who needs the site? Name the priority audience and the decision they are making.
3. What should happen next? Identify the main action and who will respond to it.
4. What proves your offer? List relevant work, expertise, product information or approved evidence.
5. What must be included? Separate essential pages and integrations from future ideas.
6. Who will supply and maintain content? Name the people and describe their available capacity.
7. What constrains the work? Share a budget range, meaningful deadline, access requirements and approval process.

Attach references with an explanation of the quality you admire. Avoid asking for a replica: the reason behind a reference is more useful than its surface. If scope is still open, read the custom-build decision guide before sharing your brief with Nocturnum. An honest unknown is a discovery question, not a weakness in the brief.

Use a short final review before sending

Read the brief once as someone unfamiliar with your company. Underline every unexplained acronym, assumed fact, and adjective without a reason. Replace them with examples or a note that the question remains open.

• Can a reader explain why this project matters now?
• Is the primary visitor’s decision clear?
• Are desired outcomes separated from speculative targets?
• Does each content responsibility have an owner?
• Are fixed constraints distinguishable from preferences?
• Is there room for the agency to propose a better solution?

A brief is ready when it supports a useful conversation, not when it anticipates every design detail. Its job is to make judgment possible. Give the team a truthful picture of the business, including its unresolved questions, and ask for a response that shows how those questions will become decisions.