How to Write a Website Brief for a Small Business

Why write a brief at all?

If you ask three web designers to quote for “a website for my business”, you’ll get three quotes for three different websites. One may include copywriting and photography; another assumes you supply everything. One may include online booking; another doesn’t mention it. The prices can’t be compared, and the cheapest may simply have left out the work you most need.

A brief fixes this. Everyone quotes for the same thing, and you can compare price, approach and experience fairly. It also forces useful decisions early, before they become expensive changes halfway through the build.

You don’t need technical knowledge to write one. Most of a good brief is about your business, your customers and what you want the website to do. A good designer will fill in the technical detail and tell you where your brief needs more thought.

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Business and goals: what the site is for

Start with a short description of the business: what you sell, who buys it, where you work and what makes you different. Two or three sentences is enough.

Then say what the website must achieve. “Look more professional” is a reasonable wish, but it’s hard to design for and impossible to measure. Better goals describe what visitors should do.

Rank the goals. If the site can only do one thing really well, which one is it? That answer shapes the homepage, the navigation and where the budget goes.

Audience: who will use it and what they need

Describe your main customer groups and what each needs from the site. A clinic’s new patients want to know treatments, prices, location and how to book; existing patients may only want opening hours and a phone number. A wholesaler’s trade customers need product specs and ordering; the public may need to find a stockist.

• Who are the main groups of visitors?
• What questions do they ask before they buy or enquire? Look at your emails and phone calls.
• What devices do they use? For most small businesses, phones come first.
• Are there any accessibility needs you know of, such as older customers or people using screen readers?

Pages: a simple sitemap

List the pages you think you need. A designer may suggest changes, but a starting list makes quotes comparable. Most small business sites need fewer pages than people expect, with more useful content on each.

Service pages deserve the most thought. Our guide on designing a service page that gets enquiries covers what each one needs.

Content: who writes the words and supplies the photos?

Content is the most common reason website projects run late. Designers can build pages quickly; waiting for text and photos takes weeks. Decide in the brief who provides each part.

• Words: will you write them, will the designer write them from interviews, or will you hire a copywriter? Copywriting is often priced separately.
• Photos: do you have good, recent photos of your work, products, premises and team? If not, budget for a photo shoot. Stock photos rarely build trust for a small business.
• Product data: for online shops, who prepares product names, descriptions, prices, variations and images? This is often the biggest single task.
• Reviews: which reviews can you use, and do you have permission?
• Existing content: which pages from the current site should be kept, rewritten or dropped?

Features: the decisions that change the price most

Features are where quotes differ most. Each one adds design, build, testing and often ongoing costs. List what you need, and be honest about what’s essential and what’s nice to have.

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Many features also add running costs, such as subscriptions, payment fees and maintenance. How much a small business website costs covers the build and running costs to plan for.

Design direction

Describe the look and feel you want, and back it up with examples. Include your logo, colours and fonts if you have them, and any brand guidelines.

• Two or three websites you like, from any industry, with a note on what you like about each.
• One or two you dislike, and why.
• Words that describe the feel you want, such as calm, bold, friendly or technical.
• Competitors’ sites, so the designer knows what you’re up against.

Remember the goals. A site can be beautiful and still fail if the enquiry button is hard to find or the pages are slow. Good design serves the goals first.

Technical and practical details

You don’t need to know how to set these up, but you do need to know who controls them. Missing logins are a common cause of launch delays.

• Domain name: who registered it, and do you have the login?
• Email: is your business email linked to the same domain? Changing website hosting must not break email.
• Current website: platform, who built it, and whether you have admin access.
• Hosting: will the designer host the site, or will you choose a host?
• Platform preference: do you need to edit the site yourself? Is there a reason to prefer a platform such as WordPress or Shopify?
• Third-party accounts: Google Business Profile, analytics, ads accounts, booking or payment tools.

If you’re replacing an existing site that gets traffic from Google, ask how old URLs will be redirected. Our guide to redesigning without losing Google rankings explains why this matters.

Search, speed and accessibility: ask for the basics

These are easy to leave out of a brief and expensive to add later. State them as requirements.

• Search basics: unique page titles and descriptions, a sensible URL structure, an XML sitemap, and redirects from any old URLs.
• Speed: pages that load quickly on a phone on mobile data, with images sized and compressed properly.
• Accessibility: aim for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at level AA. That covers readable contrast, keyboard use, form labels, image descriptions and more.
• Tracking: analytics and conversion tracking for enquiries, set up with consent where required.
• Editing: training so you can update text, images and prices yourself.

Budget, deadline and decision makers

Give a budget range. Many people avoid this, worried they’ll be charged the maximum. In practice, a range helps a designer propose the right approach, rather than guessing and quoting for something you can’t afford or something too basic. If you truly don’t know, say so and ask for options at different levels.

Give a realistic deadline and say why it matters, such as a launch event or a seasonal peak. Then name who will make decisions and approve work. One decision maker, or a small group that agrees quickly, keeps a project moving.

For reference: our website packages

We build custom WordPress websites in two packages: Product Showcase for enquiry-focused sites and Full Ecommerce for online shops, both with six months of starter SEO. Current prices and what each includes are on our website design page.

After launch: who looks after the site?

A website needs looking after once it’s live: software updates, backups, security, small content changes and checks that forms still work. Decide in the brief whether you want the designer to handle this, whether you’ll do it yourself, or whether you’ll use someone else.

If you’re not sure what’s involved, our website maintenance checklist lists the tasks and how often each one needs doing.

Website brief template

1. Business: what we do, for whom, where, and what makes us different.
2. Goals: what the site must achieve, ranked, and how we’ll measure it.
3. Audience: main visitor groups and the questions each one has.
4. Pages: our starting list.
5. Content: who provides words, photos, product data and reviews, and by when.
6. Features: essential and nice to have, with tools we already use.
7. Design: brand assets, examples we like and dislike, and why.
8. Technical: domain, email, current site, hosting, platform needs, account logins.
9. Quality: search basics, speed, WCAG 2.2 AA, tracking, editing training.
10. Budget range and deadline, with reasons.
11. Decision makers and approval process.
12. After launch: maintenance and support expectations.

Filled-in example (hypothetical)

Business: an independent physiotherapy clinic with two practitioners, treating sports injuries and back pain for adults in one town. Goals: first, more online bookings for initial assessments; second, fewer phone calls asking about prices and parking. Audience: active adults aged 25 to 60, mostly on phones; some older patients who prefer to call. Pages: home, one page each for sports injuries, back pain and massage, about, prices, contact. Content: clinic writes service descriptions; designer edits; photo shoot needed. Features: link to the clinic’s existing booking tool, enquiry form, map. Design: calm, clean and clinical without being cold; two example sites attached. Technical: domain and email with the current host; old site on a page builder, admin access available. Quality: WCAG 2.2 AA, redirects from old pages, booking tracking. Budget: a stated range; deadline before the spring sports season. Decisions: clinic owner. After launch: designer to handle updates and backups for the first year.

Common briefing mistakes

• No goals, so the design is judged on taste alone.
• Assuming the designer will write all the content without asking or budgeting for it.
• Listing every possible feature as essential.
• Forgetting domain and email logins until launch week.
• Leaving out the old site, so nobody plans redirects.
• Several decision makers with different priorities and no final say.