A good brief is not paperwork. It is the cheapest insurance a website project can buy.

A small logistics business once sent out a request for a website quote that read, in full: "Need a new website, something modern, budget is flexible, let us know." Four agencies responded. One quoted a page. One quoted a full custom platform with a client portal. One asked forty clarifying questions before quoting anything. One simply never replied, because there was nothing concrete enough to price.

None of those four agencies were wrong to interpret the brief so differently, there was nothing in it to interpret consistently. A vague brief does not just risk an inaccurate quote; it guarantees that every quote you receive is answering a slightly different question, which means comparing them side by side is closer to guesswork than decision-making.

A proper brief is not a legal document or a design exercise. It is a small, specific piece of writing that answers the questions a build will ask anyway, better answered once, deliberately, than answered accidentally, page by page, during production. This article is that document, laid out section by section, ready to fill in.

Start with one sentence, not a paragraph. "This website must generate qualified consultation requests from Gauteng manufacturing procurement teams" is a workable brief. "We want a professional online presence that reflects our brand" is not, it gives a designer nothing to test decisions against.

• What should a visitor do after finding this site, enquire, book, buy, apply, download, call?
• Who is the primary audience, described specifically enough to picture a real person?
• What does success look like in 90 days, in a number you can actually measure?
• What is currently broken or missing on the existing site, if there is one?

Resist writing this section for a boardroom audience. Write it so a designer who has never met your business could read it and understand exactly what they are building toward.

Content readiness decides more of a project timeline than almost any other factor, and it is the section most briefs skip entirely. If nobody has explicitly agreed who writes the copy, who supplies photography, who cleans up the product spreadsheet and who has final sign-off, that work does not disappear, it just becomes an unplanned negotiation partway through the build.

List every content type your site actually needs (page copy, photography, product data, legal text, logos and brand assets, testimonials, video) and write a name and a rough date next to each one. If the honest answer is "we do not have this yet and need help producing it," say so in the brief. That is a legitimate answer. A silent gap discovered in week three is not.

Include existing content in this section too. If you have a current site, note what should migrate as-is, what needs a rewrite, and what should be retired. A brief that treats "we already have copy" as automatically reusable often costs more time later than one that honestly flags what needs rework.

For every page in your must-have list, write one sentence describing its job, not just its title. "Services page: explains scope and pricing logic for our three core offers, ends with a booking CTA" tells a designer far more than the word "Services" ever could, and it gives you something concrete to check the finished page against later.

Note anything genuinely unusual about a page while you are at it, a comparison tool, a calculator, gated content behind a form, a filterable catalogue. These are exactly the details that turn a simple five-page quote into a much larger scope of work, and they deserve to be visible on the brief rather than discovered during a design review.

• Existing brand assets: logo files, colour codes, fonts, and where they live
• Three to five reference sites you like, with a specific reason for each (not just "looks nice")
• Anything you actively want to avoid, a competitor's style, a past design you disliked
• Tone of voice in one or two words: formal, conversational, technical, warm
• Whether a full brand identity system already exists, or needs to be built first

If your brand system is thin or non-existent, say so plainly rather than hoping the web team will improvise something coherent mid-build. Our companion guides on brand identity before your website and brand identity cost cover what that foundation typically requires.

1. State the real deadline, and why it mattersA launch tied to an event or campaign changes prioritisation decisions; a soft deadline does not need the same urgency premium.
2. Give a budget range, not silenceA rough range lets a supplier propose a genuinely fitting scope instead of guessing blind or padding for safety.
3. Define what "done" looks likeList the specific checks that must pass before you consider the site launch-ready, mobile QA, tracking verified, redirects mapped, content proofed.
4. Agree the revision processHow many structured rounds of feedback, and by when, before scope changes become a separate conversation.

A brief is not there to remove flexibility. It is there to make sure any changes that happen later are a decision, not an accident.

Jordan Blake, Web & Conversion Strategist

• Name two or three real competitors and what their websites do well or poorly
• State honestly what makes your offer different, in language a stranger would understand
• Note any existing customer objections a website should pre-empt or answer directly
• Flag any regulatory or compliance language that must appear on the site (industry-specific disclaimers, required registrations)

This section rarely takes more than fifteen minutes to complete, and it is the section most likely to be skipped entirely — which is exactly why briefs without it tend to produce generic-sounding first drafts that need an extra revision round to sound like the actual business.

Section 1 filled in for a fictional example: "This website must generate booking requests from small business owners in Durban needing bookkeeping support, within 90 days of launch. Success looks like at least fifteen qualified enquiries a month, up from the four we currently get through referrals alone. The current site has no clear pricing information and no visible next step beyond a phone number in the footer."

That is four sentences, and it already tells a designer more than most three-paragraph briefs manage: audience, action, timeframe, current gap. Aim for that same density across every section — specific and short beats vague and long throughout this entire document.

Every supplier reading a genuinely complete brief can quote against the same scope, which finally makes their numbers comparable instead of describing four different projects under one label. A cheap quote against a clear brief is either a genuine bargain or a real gap you can interrogate directly, either way, you are negotiating with information instead of guessing.

It also protects the relationship once work begins. A "later idea" that resurfaces mid-project is no longer a fight about whether it was promised, it is a quick look at the brief, a decision about whether to add it now or defer it, and a clear conversation about what that change costs in time or money. Most disputes on web projects are really disagreements about what was implicitly assumed. A written brief removes most of the implying.

You do not need every section perfectly answered before sending it out. A brief with two or three sections marked "not yet decided, need input" is still far more useful than no brief at all, it tells a supplier exactly where the open questions live, instead of leaving them to discover the gaps themselves during the build.

• Listing every idea anyone has ever had for the site as "must-have," so nothing is actually prioritised
• Writing the business outcome as a feeling ("look professional") instead of an action ("generate booking requests")
• Leaving content ownership blank and hoping it "sorts itself out" once the project starts
• Attaching five competitor websites as references with no explanation of what specifically to take from each
• Sending the brief to only one supplier, then having no comparable second opinion when the quote arrives

Copy the seven sections above into a shared document and fill in what you can today. Mark anything genuinely undecided rather than guessing just to complete the form, an honest gap is more useful to a supplier than a confident-sounding assumption that turns out to be wrong.

Our companion resource, the complete website brief guide, walks through this same structure with more worked examples if you want a second reference alongside this template.

Once your brief is drafted, run it through the website cost calculator for a planning range, or send it directly to Nexus. A real brief, even an imperfect one, produces a far more useful first conversation than "we need a modern website" ever will.