Web design brief template
A good brief gets you comparable quotes. Copy this, fill it in, send the same version to everyone you are asking.
The brief
1. What the business does. Two sentences. Assume no knowledge.
2. What the site is for. One goal. "Get enquiries from local homeowners", "sell twelve products", "let people book appointments".
3. Who it is for. Who visits, and what they are trying to do when they arrive.
4. Roughly how many pages. An estimate is fine. List them if you can.
5. What it needs to do. Contact form, online payments, booking, a blog, a members area.
6. What it connects to. Anything you already run — a booking system, a CRM, accounting software.
7. What you are supplying. Copy, photos, logo. Be honest here. If nothing is ready, say so.
8. Your deadline. And whether it is real. "Before our trade show on 4 June" is useful; "ASAP" is not.
9. Your budget range. Yes, really.
10. Sites you like. Two or three, with a sentence on what you like about each.
Why you should state a budget
People withhold budgets because they expect the quote to expand to fill it. In practice the opposite is more common: without a number, designers guess, and half the quotes come back irrelevant.
A range is enough. "Somewhere between £3,000 and £5,000" lets a designer tell you honestly whether that is realistic for what you have described, and propose a sensible scope for it. Without it, you get proposals for projects you were never going to buy.
If a designer's quote lands exactly at the top of your stated range every time, that is worth noticing. But refusing to state a range to avoid that risk costs you more in wasted conversations than it saves.
What does not belong in a brief
- Detailed design instructions. "Make the header blue" pre-empts the work you are paying for. Describe the problem, not the solution.
- Technology choices, unless you have a real constraint. "It must be WordPress because our team knows it" is a valid reason. "It must be WordPress because I read it is best" is not.
- Everything you might ever want. A brief listing forty features gets priced for forty features. Separate must-have from nice-to-have.
Common questions
01How long should a brief be?
One page is usually enough for a small business site. Longer briefs are not better briefs — clarity matters far more than length.
02Should I send the same brief to everyone?
Yes. Different briefs produce quotes you cannot compare, which defeats the purpose of getting more than one.
03What if I do not know what I need?
Say that in the brief. It is a normal position, and a good designer will propose a scope rather than expecting you to specify one. What is not helpful is pretending to certainty you do not have.
Get a fixed quote in writing
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