Most redesign projects begin with a phone call and a rough idea. That works, up to a point. The trouble arrives when you talk to a third agency, receive three proposals that answer three different questions, and discover you can’t compare them.
A brief fixes that. It’s a short document describing what you need and why, written before anyone quotes. It takes an afternoon, it makes every proposal you receive better, and it makes the ones you receive comparable to each other.
It also does something quieter. Writing it forces the internal conversations that would otherwise surface in week nine of the build, when they’re expensive.
Why it changes the proposals you get
Three things happen when you send a brief instead of describing the project on a call.
The proposals become comparable. Agencies answering the same written question produce quotes you can lay side by side. Without one, each proposal reflects whatever the salesperson heard that day, and the differences between them tell you more about their listening than their capability.
The questions get better. A serious agency reads a brief and comes back with things you hadn’t considered. Vague conversations produce vague questions, and you learn far less about how someone thinks.
You find out who read it. The proposal that repeats your brief back as a feature list is a warning. The one that challenges a premise, or says a section of what you asked for isn’t worth building, is worth a second meeting. That signal alone justifies the afternoon.
What a brief is not
Some of the resistance to writing one comes from imagining the wrong document.
A brief is not a technical specification. You don’t need to know whether you want WordPress, what plugins to run, or how the forms should be wired. That’s the agency’s job, and choosing the platform is a decision that should follow your requirements rather than precede them.
It’s not a design direction either. Collecting sites you like is useful, but a brief that leads with visual preferences invites proposals about how the site will look rather than what it will do.
And it doesn’t need to be long. Two pages is plenty. A brief that runs to twenty pages usually contains a lot of guessing.
What to include
Eight sections cover almost everything an agency needs to quote accurately.
- Your business, briefly. What you sell, to whom, and how you make money. Two paragraphs.
- Why now. The trigger. New leadership, a merger, a site that no longer reflects the business, or one that simply stopped producing enquiries. This tells an agency what success would mean.
- Your buyers. Who decides, who influences, and what they worry about before signing. If several people are involved in a purchase, say so, because it changes what the site has to do.
- What the site must achieve. Stated as outcomes rather than features. “Produce qualified enquiries for the sales team” is useful. “Have a modern look” is not.
- What’s wrong with the current site. Be specific and be blunt. This is the most useful section in most briefs and the one people soften.
- Scope and requirements. Roughly how many pages, what integrations matter, whether you need multiple languages, a members’ area, e-commerce, or a resource library.
- Content. Who writes it, what exists already, and what’s missing. Content is the most common cause of delay, so agencies pay close attention to this answer.
- Budget and timeline. A range, and any fixed date you’re working toward.
What a Brief Includes
- 1Your business, briefly. What you sell, to whom, and how you make money.
- 2Why now. The trigger, which tells an agency what success would mean.
- 3Your buyers. Who decides, who influences, and what they worry about.
- 4What the site must achieve. Outcomes rather than features.
- 5What’s wrong now. Be specific and be blunt.
- 6Scope and requirements. Pages, integrations, languages, members’ areas.
- 7Content. Who writes it, what exists, what’s missing.
- 8Budget and timeline. A range, and any fixed date.
Say the budget
The instinct is to withhold it, on the theory that naming a number means paying it. In practice, withholding it costs you more than it saves.
A website can be built for five thousand dollars or five hundred thousand. Without a range, an agency is guessing which conversation you’re in, and guessing badly wastes both your time. Most will produce a middle-of-the-road proposal that fits nobody.
Giving a range does the opposite. It lets an agency tell you honestly what’s achievable within it, and whether your requirements and your number are compatible. That’s a more useful answer than a proposal engineered to fit a figure it can’t actually deliver.
If you don’t know what a range should look like, our breakdown of what B2B websites cost in Canada gives you something to start from.
The questions that are hardest to answer
Three sections of the brief tend to produce internal disagreement. That disagreement is the point.
Who decides? If four people expect approval rights, the project will find out eventually. Better to establish it now, when the answer costs a conversation rather than a week of rework.
What is the site actually for? Marketing, sales, recruitment, and support all want different things. A site can serve several, but not equally, and the ranking should be deliberate rather than accidental.
What are we willing to remove? Most redesigns start with a wish to keep everything and add more. Deciding early what can go is what keeps a site focused.
If your team can’t agree on these, write down the disagreement. An agency reading “we’re not aligned on whether this is a sales tool or a recruitment tool” learns something genuinely useful.
What you don’t need to know
Plenty of briefs stall because someone believes they need answers they don’t.
- The technology. Platform, hosting, and plugins are proposals to receive, not decisions to make first.
- The page structure. A sitemap is an early deliverable of the project, not a prerequisite for it.
- The design. Reference sites help, but only as a conversation starter.
- The exact page count. A range is fine. “Roughly twenty-five, maybe more if we add case studies” is a perfectly good answer.
Write “we don’t know yet, and we’d like your recommendation” wherever it’s true. It’s a more honest brief and it usually produces better proposals.
Write This Down
- Outcomes you need
- What’s broken now
- Who signs off
- Your budget range
Leave to the Agency
- Platform and hosting
- Sitemap and page structure
- Design direction
- Exact page count
What a finished brief actually looks like
Here is the one-page version, filled in by the composite manufacturer we’ve used through this series.
What we do. Lakeshore Filtration designs and installs industrial air filtration systems for food processing plants across southern Ontario. Roughly half our revenue comes through distributors in Quebec.
Why now. Our site is eight years old, it isn’t available in French, and our sales team has stopped sending prospects to it.
What it has to achieve. Produce qualified enquiries from maintenance managers, and give our sales team something credible to send during a bid.
What’s broken. No case studies. Nothing about audit compliance, which is what buyers actually ask about. Unusable on a phone from a plant floor.
Must support. French content for the Quebec market. Enquiries flowing into our CRM. A resource section we can add to ourselves.
Content. We have product specs and photos. We have nobody to write case studies and would like help.
Budget and timeline. Twenty to thirty thousand. We’d like it live before the trade show in April.
Sign-off. Our operations director. One person, deliberately.
That’s twelve sentences, and an agency can quote from it accurately. Notice how much of it is admission rather than instruction. The most useful lines are the ones conceding what isn’t working and what they can’t do themselves.
A one-page version
If two pages feels like too much, this works:
- What we do, and who buys from us
- Why we’re redoing the site now
- What it has to achieve
- What’s broken about the current one
- Anything it must integrate with or support
- Who writes the content
- Budget range and any fixed date
- Who signs off
It is just eight lines. An agency can quote from that, and you’ll get proposals you can actually lay side by side.
An hour that saves a month
The brief isn’t paperwork. It’s the cheapest possible version of the conversations that otherwise happen mid-project, when changing your mind costs real money.
It also tells you something about the agencies you send it to. The good ones will come back with questions that make you think, and some will tell you your brief points to a smaller project than you assumed. Those are the responses worth paying attention to, and they’re the ones you’ll never get from a vague phone call.
Where Briefs Go Wrong
Once you have a brief, the next question is what actually happens after you sign, which we’ve covered in what to expect during a redesign.
If you’d like a second pair of eyes on a brief before you send it out, book a discovery call and we’ll go through it with you – no pitch, and no pressure.
