A web design brief is a document created by a business or organisation when commissioning a new website. It outlines the objectives, requirements, and expectations for the new website. A professional web design brief will help a web designer or web design agency understand and price the project correctly.
When considering commissioning a new website, you will need to find the right person to do the job. This process can be time-consuming, especially if you are unclear about what you want to achieve. Making a web design brief can be a great starting point, as it can help you clearly communicate your vision and requirements for the new site internally and externally.
Framework has created a web design brief template to help you plan your new website step by step.
Find the web design brief template at the bottom of this post
What to consider when creating a web design brief...
Background and Objectives
When starting a brief, you should always provide some background about your business/organisation. This is information such as what you do, your mission and values and position in the market. This can help to create a website that reflects your business/organisation through its content, design and tone. If the designer doesn’t understand you or your industry, then this will reflect through what they produce. Providing as much valuable information as possible, ensures the designer develops a website that cohesively communicates the right messaging and brand image that you want to reflect.
Partnered with your background, you need to provide clear objectives. Objectives establish what the expectations are for the web design project by stating the overall purpose of the website and what you hope to achieve. For example, this could be to improve your businesses online presence or to have a website that is easier to manage. By setting clear objectives this ensures clear direction to create a design that is focused on aligning with your expectations, which in our opinion is the key ingredient for a successful project. So get thinking about those objectives!
Insight
Providing insights within your web design brief can come in multiple forms such as your audience, current site, competitors and inspirations.
Audience
For audience, you want to provide information about who you are trying to target through your website and what you want them to do when they reach your site. This could be as simple as the people who use your product/services and what they do to access this. Is this by fulling in an enquiry form or calling. By considering this you will allow the web designer to tailor the design to create the perfect user experience for that specific audience therefore they are more likely to engage with your website.
Your Current Site and Challenges
When discussing your current site, this is where you need to consider the challenges or limitations you currently face with your website that have pushed you to commission a new one. For example, is the platform your website is on hard to manage, or does your site fail to be mobile responsive. If you don’t currently have a website and are building a site from scratch, thinking about the reasons that have made you want a website is equally important. This could be reasons such as a shift in your audience to online or wanting a platform where you can share information about the company. By providing this information the web designer can address these issues and provide direct solutions for you and your audience.
With your current website you must also consider the technical challenges you face. For example, this could be the access to your domain or the platform your site is currently on. It is important to communicate these challenges so that these issues can be addressed with solutions provided.
Competitors and Inspirations
Competitors are businesses/organisations that offer similar products or services to you. When creating your web design brief, you should communicate who your main competitors are with your designer. This can help get insight into what they do on their website or in general terms and how you compare with them. You and your designer can then create a strategic method to leverage your USP’s (Unique Selling Points) through your website so you can stand out in the market.
Along with this it is important to highlight your inspirations. By this I mean providing examples and communicating websites that you like or don’t like in terms of their design. For example, these could be your competitors or maybe a website from an opposite industry. This can help your designer be visually informed about how you want your website to look. Design elements can be hard to explain especially for someone who has little knowledge in the area of web design, therefore showing your designer exactly what you want can result in better collaboration and end results. Now it’s time to do some stalking and find those perfect examples!
Design and Functionality
This is about how your website looks and how it functions to help you achieve your objectives. With the design you must communicate with your designer if you have a logo or brand guidelines you need to follow so that the website will fully reflect your business/organisation. This, paired with your great list of inspirations will generate a website that matches your vision. When creating a new website it is common for businesses/organisations to require a rebrand, so if this is the case an agency can sometimes assist you with this, like us here at Framework.
When thinking about functionality, you must think about 3 things: your objectives, your audience and your needs.
It’s time to think back to your objectives and use these to decide what functionality you require. For example, if your objective is to promote events, you will require an event booking system and if your objective is to sell products online, you will need an online shop and secure payment system. As well as thinking about your objective you must think about your audience and what you want them to be able to do on the site. For example, if you want them to sign up to your newsletter then you need a form and if you want them to donate you need to have a donation system integrated. Thinking about functionality in terms of your audience will help you create a successful website with a good user experience. Last you must think about your needs as a business/organisation. Websites can require a level or admin especially if you are receiving enquiries and bookings. There are functionalities that can be implemented to your website that can help to streamline these administrative processes such as integrating a CRM system to collect data. By communicating this with your web designer it can help to build a site that functions in the correct way to benefit everyone using the website, while achieving the overall objectives.
The Process
When creating your web design brief, it is important to start considering your expectations and methods in which you can ensure the project runs smoothly from your end. For example, a method to make the project run smoothly would be to decide who the project manager will be and who will be supporting them through the process. This is a crucial decision as a web design project is not something small to leave in the hands of one person, it requires multiple people to support with aspects such as the content of the website. By having support for your project manager, work can get done quicker and more efficiently, which benefits the designer as well as your business/organisation.
With your expectations, this would be about coming up with a timescale that works for your business/organisation. By communicating this, it can allow the project to flow more efficiently with clear objectives set out along this timeline. This can benefit not only you but the web designer as they can create a structured plan to complete your website on time.
Lastly, it is helpful to give an estimation or an exact figure of what your budget will be. This is so the web designer can compare your requirements with the budget so they can provide a solution for you that falls within your price range.
Overall, a web design brief is the best starting point when beginning your web design project journey. Starting a project can be daunting, however being able to break down and communicate your expectations and needs will make the process more manageable and lead to a successful result that both you and the designer are happy with.
Ready to start your web design brief?
Our Template provides everything you need to create the perfect web design brief, and it’s free!
