A bad brief is expensive, but the cost never shows up as a line item: scope understood two different ways, a goal that changes in revision three, a "that's not quite what we meant" in delivery week. Answer the 6 headings below on a single page and you have a real brief — and for the first time, the quotes you receive will be pricing the same job.
1. What is the site's job?
"We need a corporate website" is a situation, not a goal. A goal is one sentence with a verb in it: get the quote form filled, get appointments booked, collect dealership applications, push sales to the store. When that sentence is sharp, it is obvious what the design serves; when it is not, every page gets designed to "look good" and nothing can be measured.
2. Who lands on the site, and what must they get in 10 seconds?
Describe your visitor in one sentence: a prospect hearing about you for the first time, a ready buyer comparing prices, a candidate applying for a job? Then answer the question that matters most: what should this person understand within the first 10 seconds of the homepage? Until that answer is written down, every headline is the agency's guess.
3. The page list, and where content comes from
Write the pages out, then group the ones that share a structure — cost follows template count, not page count. Next to each page, note where its content comes from: who owns the copy, do photos exist, will video be shot? Saying "we'll handle content" and then staring at an empty page in delivery week is this industry's most classic delay. Content production belongs in the quote as its own line.
4. How will success be measured?
The successful site is not the one that goes live; it is the one that moves toward its goal. Put two or three metrics in the brief: monthly form submissions, phone calls, add-to-carts, applications. Written metrics bind the agency too — analytics setup, goal tracking and a speed budget stop being negotiable extras and become part of the job.
5. Three sites you like, one you don't
Give three examples with one sentence each: what exactly do you like — the speed, the restraint, the storytelling? Add one example you dislike; a "not like this" sentence usually says more than a whole list of wishes. These four sentences end the taste debate before the work starts.
6. Budget band and date — without hiding either
Naming your budget does not weaken your negotiation; it gets the scope built correctly. The same need can be solved at both ends of a wide range — the difference is scope, and an agency that doesn't know the band will either overquote or quietly drop a critical item. Same for the date: if the site is tied to a launch, a fair or a campaign, that goes in the first line of the brief.
These 6 headings fit on one A4 page, but they fix the direction of the work from day one. If you want to pin the scope down together, get a quote — our 5-question form writes half of this brief for you, and we finish the rest on the first call. To see what we deliver, the web development page is open.