How to write a great website design brief

Many people think they may point to other sites and say, “I like that. Can you do something like that?” and hope for the best. In reality, this approach allows replicating someone’s site that won’t suit their clients’ and business needs. Detailed info about the company, target audience, staff, products, or services all help web designers understand what a business is about. Hence, web designers can use the brief to create a unique website on time and within budget with a user-friendly interface that converts visitors into customers at a high conversion rate or advocate business values. That is why a good website design brief is vital for the website’s effective project management and future success. But how to write a great website brief?

About a website brief

In short, a website design brief is a document that outlines the specifics of a website design project. It is the project’s starting point and should provide the problem to be solved and the expectations.

A website design brief explores the website’s goals, requirements, target audiences, target locations, list of the site’s features, vision, and preferred web design style in detail.

It allows both the client and web design agency to clearly understand the website design project workflow, timelines, and deliverables. Also, a website design brief helps to calculate the cost of professional website development.

Despite plenty of reasons to use a design brief, one of the most important: is web development project efficiency. If you are a business owner or manager looking to hire a website design agency, a well-written design brief will help web designers focus on your business needs and goals and build a great website.

Usually, clients or their marketers create a website design brief. But they may not be familiar enough with the web design process, and web designers or project managers should help to write the design brief to set the goals and expectations.

What should you include in a website design to make it great?

If you want to write an effective website design brief, it needs to be clear to avoid any misinterpretation and includes all the relevant information, such as:

Overview of the company, its products or services

Start with covering the business niche overview and company profile. The main purpose is to carry the brand values, the company’s mission, and your vision plans for future business growth to the web design team. It helps web designers understand your business’s core and its values for potential customers. Hence, web designers can develop these ideas and visualize them in an exciting website.

Also, it is a good idea to add stakeholders and persons who make decisions to move the project forward and solve any issues that may arise.

Define the website design’s goals

You should find out the problems that website design needs to solve. It makes the future website design effective and helps to achieve the business goals. For example:

Create a trustworthy design to build customers’ trust in your company or products.

Increase mobile traffic with a responsive and accessible website.

Boost sales with specific functionalities.

Generate leads with updated sales funnel and Call-To-Action elements.

You can share what worked or didn’t on your existing site, which helps a web design team to create a better design.

Project scope and deliverables

Next, you should define exactly what work is needed. It ensures that the web design team is fully aware of what is expected to make a project successful. For example:

• Do you need to refresh a website design or a new website to be built from scratch?
• Describe all expected deliverables, including the website pages, functionalities, and additional assets such as the brand identity, content, specific features, or services like PPC campaigns, SEO, and website support.
• Describe your preferred web design style and tone of the site’s content.

Note that including the technical requirements and specifications upfront can save you several rounds of website design revisions and help to avoid additional costs.

Project scope helps a web design team calculate a website’s cost and define project timelines.

Identify the site’s target audience

Who is your ideal end-user for the website? Describe demographics, firmographics, and psychographics, including age, gender, values, location, annual income, and other relevant information that may help web designers to create a unique website design that will be easy to use, attractive, and has a high conversion rate.

Usually, professional web design agencies provide customer research too. It brings a fresh look at your business and allows you to discover something new about your clients that help to create a website design that suits your target audience’s needs.

Competitors research

Competitors’ research can help you define how to set the new website apart. Usually, web designers review competitors’ sites to understand their selling points, marketing messages, and functionalities they use. Customer pains or problems competitors have failed to solve allow you to solve those issues in your website design and gain a competitive edge.

Conclusions

Creating the website design brief is not a cakewalk.

The more information about your expectations and website design vision you provide, the better a web design team understands your needs, and the better website will be designed. A detailed brief inspires web designers to create a unique, creative, and functional solution that feet your business needs and requirements.

A well-written design brief saves your time and money because a web design team has the idea of creating a website design that you expect with fewer revisions. Also, a good design brief means the right website design that starts generating traffic, leads, and purchases immediately and can cut post-launch costs such as costs of changes in design, additional marketing costs, etc.

If you hire a professional web design agency, you can rely on their help in a website design brief-creating process. Professionals will select the right technologies and Content Management System (CMS) for your site, conduct customer and competitor research, and sort out the optimal solution for your budget. This approach is suitable for business owners unfamiliar with the website design process or creating a website for the first time.