A website brief template for your small business

A useful website brief explains what the business does, what customers need to decide and what the finished site must make possible. It does not need to be a long document full of technical terms.

Use the sections below as a copyable starting point. Leave unknowns labelled as open questions. A provider can help resolve them, but an explicit gap is more useful than an assumption that later becomes part of the price.

1. Describe the business and the customer

Complete these statements in plain language:

• We provide these services or products: …
• Our most suitable customers are: …
• We genuinely serve these areas or markets: …
• Customers usually contact us because: …
• We do not provide: …
• The facts and claims we can substantiate are: …

Avoid writing only “we need a professional website”. Explain what makes the business useful and which questions customers ask before choosing it. If there are several audiences, describe the differences in their needs.

Illustrative example: a fictional joinery workshop wants enquiries for fitted storage from homeowners within its working area. It does not sell flat-pack furniture or offer emergency repairs. Those boundaries help determine the service wording, gallery content and enquiry fields.

2. Name the primary visitor action

Choose the main action the website should support: request a quotation, arrange an initial conversation, check availability or buy a defined product. Explain what happens after the action and who handles it.

Complete: “A successful enquiry gives us …, reaches …, and allows us to …”. Include any information needed to judge fit, such as a postcode or service type. Do not collect details merely because another website does.

W3C’s forms guidance is a useful reference when turning this requirement into clear fields and feedback. The brief should describe the business purpose; the implementation should make that purpose easy to complete.

3. List the pages and their jobs

For each proposed page, write the visitor’s question, the information needed and the next action. The initial list can change during planning, but it gives the discussion substance.

Page	Visitor’s question	Content or evidence needed
Homepage	Is this business relevant to me?	Clear offer, audience and onward routes
Main service	Does this solve my problem?	Scope, process, exclusions and useful answers
Work or examples	What might the work involve?	Authorised real examples or labelled concepts
About	Who am I dealing with?	Accurate business and people information
Contact	What happens if I get in touch?	Practical contact route and expectations

Add pages only when they serve a distinct need. Five pages are not automatically enough, and twenty pages are not automatically more useful. Mark which pages must be complete for the first release.

4. Record content, assets and access

Create a small register with the item, owner, status and due date. Include copy, logo files, photographs, business details, domain access, hosting access and any third-party accounts.

For images and testimonials, establish permission to publish. For technical or regulated claims, identify the person responsible for approving accuracy. The designer should know which wording is confirmed and which is still a draft.

If there is an existing website, add its URLs and important downloads. Flag pages used in emails or printed material. Google’s site-move guidance makes URL planning relevant when the replacement changes addresses.

5. Explain the design direction

Describe the qualities the site should communicate: calm, practical, precise, welcoming or expressive, for example. Link to references and say what you like about each one. “The navigation makes the services easy to compare” is more useful than “make it like this”.

Also record what must stay: an established logo, approved colours, recognisable photography or a successful customer journey. References inform the design; they do not give permission to copy another business’s content or assets.

Include motion preferences and usability constraints. If the business serves visitors who need a particularly straightforward interface, say so. The design should support the customer’s task rather than become a separate obstacle.

6. Set practical boundaries

Record the budget range you are prepared to discuss, the reason for any fixed deadline and the person authorised to approve decisions. List required integrations, editing needs and expected content frequency.

Ask the provider to separate included work, optional work and unresolved items. Agree how changes will be estimated and approved. A useful scope makes it possible to say what can be deferred without breaking the core journey.

Name the handover requirements: domain ownership, hosting access, content access, editing instructions, renewal responsibilities and the process for getting help. These are part of commissioning a usable website, not administrative details to leave until the end.

7. Define how you will accept the work

Write a short checklist of observable outcomes. For example: the main service can be understood on a phone; the form works with a keyboard; a test enquiry reaches the right person; priority old URLs behave as agreed; the owner can perform an ordinary content update.

Keep business outcomes separate from delivery checks. A provider can verify that a form works at launch. It cannot verify future enquiry growth before the site has attracted suitable visitors.

Send this brief when discussing your website, or use it to compare providers through our web designer selection guide. The brief is successful when both sides understand the work well enough to make a clear decision.