How to create a website brief.
How do I create a website?
The answer is: Planning
Either you are going to create your website or you are going to hire someone else to.
Regardless, having an awesome brief is a great step towards planning your website.
Please download the free template below to get started.
It all starts with the brief!
Hold up!
Download this FREE brief template to get you started:
* Hard hat required when planning
1. About your Business
Write a description of the business or company the site is for.
It is very important for me or any designer to understand your business in multiple ways, such as its:
- History
- Core beliefs
- Motto
- Values
- Mission
- Ethics
- Morals
- Purpose
- Market positioning
- Brand positioning
- Business outlook
- Voice and tone
2. Your previous website
What do you want to carry over and what do you want to avoid?
- Loading speed
- Broken/error pages
- Bad links
- Video and audio malfunctions
- Mobile-friendliness
- Poor URL structure
- Poor functionality or user experience (UX)
3. Target Audience
Who are you targeting your product at?
This will affect the way that the website will look and operate. The younger generation uses websites differently from that of the older for example.
4. Goals of the New Site
What is it that you would like to achieve? :
- Raising brand awareness
- Increasing sales
- Lead generation
- Become a source of trustworthy information for the target audience
- Become an information hub for your sector
- Target a specific audience
- Capture emails
- Become a crucial part of a customer’s purchase journey
- To be a portal that fits somewhere in your business process (sales, complaints, product launch, employee portal, or intranet)
- Improve search engine rankings
5. Competitors
Quite simply, spend some time looking at your competitor’s websites. What works for them, what doesn’t (in your opinion)?
It is your chance to get ahead by having a better website.
Supply a list of websites that you like and don’t like and the reasons too…
6. Technical Features and Requirements
What do you want your website to be able to do?
- Social media sharing
- Social media feed
- Live chat
- Raising tickets for complaints
- Security
- Multimedia
- Comment section
- Contact forms
- Call To Actions
- Navigation
- Interactive elements
- Category page hierarchy
- News or blog section
- Language/country-specific versions
7. In House
Are you willing to get involved with the editing and adding of content?
You should, in your brief include your position when it comes to accessing your website and the level of background control you would like over content posting.
8. Content
Can you provide a sitemap/architecture or list of pages that you would like to have on your website?
Then think of what you want on those pages: Images, Videos, Copy, People, Contact details, google maps, etc…
9. Hosting, Support and Maintenance
Do you have a pre-existing hosting plan or do you want the design agency to host for you? (along with support and maintenance)
In most cases, the design agency will have their own hosting and maintenance (I do, check it out)
10. Deadline
When do you want it?
Set the deadline to give your expectation of the timeframe.
11. Budget
Finally Budget.
Provide your budget for your website, do your research and understand that there are two components of website building:
1. The website is a product
2. Maintaining, supporting, and ensuring that the website works is a service.