How to write a website brief that gets you what you actually want
“Modern and clean” is not a brief. Here’s what to write instead — the five inputs every agency actually needs from you.
Most website briefs we receive read like a Pinterest board written in PowerPoint. “Modern, clean, professional, minimal.” Those words mean nothing to a designer. Here’s what actually moves the project.
1. One sentence on the business
Not a paragraph. One sentence that tells us what you do, who for, and what makes you different. If you can’t write that sentence, the website won’t fix it.
2. The conversion goal, in numbers
“Get more customers” is not a goal. “Five patient enquiries a week from organic search” is. The number tells the designer what to prioritise and the developer what to measure.
3. Three sites you like — and why
The “why” is the only part that matters. “I like this site” tells us nothing. “I like how this clinic site puts the booking button next to the headline instead of in the nav” tells us everything.
4. The pages you actually need
List them. Don’t guess at a sitemap — list the jobs each page has to do. “A page for people searching ‘Invisalign Manchester’ to decide within two minutes whether to book a consult.” That’s a useful page brief.
5. What you already have
- Brand guidelines — or a logo and two colours, if guidelines don’t exist yet.
- Photography — with rights. Stock will show through.
- Copy, or a draft of it, or nothing (in which case we write it).
- Analytics access — GA4, Search Console, whatever’s running.
“A good brief is half an hour of your time that saves two weeks of the agency guessing.”
What to leave out
Don’t describe the UI. Don’t tell us you want a hero image and a three-column layout. That’s the designer’s job. Describe the goal and the audience; we’ll design backwards from that.
How our onboarding is structured
If you subscribe to Stratevo, you don’t write a brief from scratch. You fill in our onboarding form, which is built around these five inputs — takes about 15 minutes. Prefer to talk? The kickoff call covers the same ground in 30. Either way, we’re reading on the day we receive it and designing the day after.
If your copy isn’t ready, we write it — included on every plan. If your photography isn’t ready, we tell you what to shoot before the design pass so the first draft doesn’t need stock placeholders.