The success of a website is largely decided before a single page is designed.

Most projects follow the same path. The look gets all the attention, the money gets spent, and six months later you’ve got a site that might look nice, but does nothing else for your business.

A website isn’t just a brochure. It’s an essential business tool that has certain goals to achieve: to sell, to book, to generate enquiries, to inform, to build trust, and so on.

The clearer you are about that job in the brief, the better the site that comes out the other end.

At Rise & Amplify, we’ve been designing and building websites for over 20 years, for FMCG brands, B2B services, software companies, BIDs, sports organisations, and plenty more in between. Here’s how to write a web design brief that gets you the perfect website for your needs.

What A Great Web Design Brief Looks Like

A web design brief is a document that covers exactly what your website needs to achieve, who it’s for, and how it should look and work. Unlike most creative briefs, a web design brief has to define both form and function, because online the two are inseparable. A beautiful site nobody can navigate gets you nowhere, and a functional site that feels cheap undermines your brand.

A good web design brief answers two questions at once. What do you want people to feel when they arrive, and what do you want them to do before they leave? A brief that holds both in view gives the agency everything it needs to build a site that looks right and performs.

“The success of a website is largely decided before a single page is designed.”

The 9 Things Every Web Design Brief Needs

  1. The Main Goal of the Website

Start here, because everything depends on it. What is this website actually for? A site built to generate B2B enquiries is a completely different thing to one built to sell products, book appointments, showcase a portfolio, or promote a place.

Be specific about the primary job, then rank the secondary ones. A BID site might need to inform businesses, attract visitors, showcase events, and report on levy spend all at once, but one of those matters most. A software company’s site lives or dies on demos, sign-ups, and lead capturing. Name the main job and the whole project will shape around it.

While you’re at it, put a number on it. A goal you can measure (“50 qualified enquiries a month,” not just “more enquiries”) gives everyone something to design towards and shapes every decision that follows, from where the calls to action sit to how the whole site is structured.

  1. Who It’s For

Who’s actually using this site, and what are they looking to do when they arrive? Go beyond demographics and into intent. Someone landing on a B2B software site to compare features needs something very different from someone who is arriving ready to buy.

Most sites serve more than one audience, and that’s fine, but rank them. Tell us who the main user is, their goal, and the journey you want them to take. The clearer the user profile, the better we can create the ideal user experience.

  1. The Content

This is where most web projects stall, so face it early. A website is only as good as what goes in it, and content is almost always the thing that holds a project up.

Tell us the truth about your content. Do you have copy, images, and video ready, or does it need creating? Is there existing content to migrate? Who’s responsible for writing it, and by when? Content is the hidden critical path of nearly every website project, so the earlier it’s planned, the smoother everything runs.

  1. Structure and Key Pages

You don’t need a full sitemap in the brief, but a sense of scale helps enormously. Roughly how many pages? What are the essential ones? Are there specific sections that matter more than others? A shop, a case study library, a resource hub, a members’ area, an events calendar?

If certain user journeys are critical, spell them out. “A visitor should be able to find and book a table in three clicks” tells us more than a page count ever could.

  1. Functionality and Features

This is where web briefs get expensive if left vague. What does the site actually need to do? E-commerce, booking systems, gated content, account logins, search, multilingual support, integrations with a CRM or booking platform, event listings.

List the must-haves and separate them from the nice-to-haves. Every feature adds cost and complexity, so being honest about what you genuinely need, versus what would be good someday, keeps the project realistic and on budget.

  1. Platform and Technical Requirements

Tell us what you know about the technical side. Is there a platform you want to build on or must stay on? A CMS your team already knows? Hosting requirements, security or accessibility standards, existing systems the site has to talk to?

If your team will be updating the site themselves, say so, because it changes how we build it. A site that’s a joy for an agency to edit but baffling for your team is the wrong site.

  1. SEO and Findability

A website nobody finds isn’t going to achieve anything, however good it looks. If you have target keywords, existing search rankings, or a migration that risks your SEO, flag it early.

This matters more than ever. People increasingly find businesses through search engines and AI tools, so a site built with findability in mind from the start performs far better than one where SEO is bolted on at the end. If organic traffic matters to you, make it part of the brief.

  1. Brand and Design Direction

Share your brand guidelines, your assets, and a sense of the style you’re after. Show sites you admire and say why. “I like this one because the navigation is effortless” is far more useful than “I like this one.”

Equally, flag what to avoid, and any accessibility standards you need to meet. The best web design balances brand expression with usability, so tell us where that balance sits for you.

  1. Budget and Timeline

Websites have an enormous cost range, from a focused brochure site to a complex platform with custom functionality and integrations. Without a budget, we can’t tell you what’s realistic, and you can’t tell whether your ambitions and your resources match.

On timeline, work back from any real deadline, a launch, an event, a campaign, a funding milestone, and be honest about who’s available internally to feed the project. Websites slow down when content and sign-off stall on the client side, so plan for that upfront.

A Few Traps to Avoid

  • Briefing a look, not a job. A website’s job is to do something: generate, sell, book, inform. Lead the brief with the outcome, not the aesthetic.
  • Underestimating content. Content delays more website projects than anything else. Plan who’s writing what, and by when, before design begins.
  • Feature creep. Every “wouldn’t it be good if” adds cost and time. Separate must-haves from nice-to-haves and be ruthless about it.
  • Forgetting the people who’ll run it. If your team can’t easily update the site, it’ll be out of date within months. Brief for the people maintaining it, not just launching it.
  • Leaving SEO to the end. Findability has to be built in, not added on. A site that ignores search is a shop with no signage.

“A good web design brief answers two questions at once. What do you want people to feel when they arrive, and what do you want them to do before they leave?”

Frequently Asked Questions

A web design brief should cover the job of the site, who it’s for, what success looks like, your content situation, the structure and key pages, required functionality, platform and technical needs, SEO and findability, brand and design direction, budget, and timeline. The clearer you are on the job the site has to do, the better the result.

Long enough to cover the site’s job, its users, and its functional requirements clearly. Websites have more moving parts than most projects, especially around features and content, so the brief often runs a little longer. Clarity beats length; a well-organised brief covering the nine points above is exactly right.

Be very specific about the practical requirements, functionality, platform, integrations, and success metrics. Those drive the cost and the build. On the visual side, share references and brand guidelines, then leave room for your agency to bring expertise. The most common mistake is over-specifying the look while under-specifying what the site needs to do.

It depends heavily on scope, from a few weeks for a focused site to several months for a complex platform with custom functionality. Content readiness is usually the biggest variable, so a project with content prepared moves far faster than one starting from scratch.

Not fully, but the more you’ve thought about it, the better. Content is the most common cause of website delays, so knowing what you have, what you need, and who’s responsible for it makes a real difference. A good agency can help create content, but that needs planning into the scope from the start.

Frequently Asked Questions

A website rarely stands alone. It’s where your brand, your products, and your campaigns all come together, so the strongest sites are built on solid foundations. Dig into the guide that matches what’s next: