How to write a website brief that doesn't waste everyone's time.

The opening idea

The job of a website brief is not to describe what you want. It's to make sure the designer doesn't have to guess. Those sound similar. They aren't.

Most briefs describe what the company does, lists features, names competitors, attaches the brand book, and waves vaguely at the homepage. None of that helps a designer make decisions. What helps a designer is knowing: who specifically is visiting, what they're trying to do, what they're missing on the current site, and what success looks like in 6 months.

This article is about how to think your way to those answers, before you ever open the brief template.

The wrong reasons most briefs get written

Three common reasons people write briefs that produce bad outcomes.

Reason 1: "We need to look more professional"

Vague. Professional how? Compared to whom? In which dimension, copy, visual, performance, conversion?

A brief written from this prompt produces a designer guessing at what "professional" means to you. They'll show you a direction. You'll reject it because it isn't what you imagined. They'll show another. You'll reject that. Six rounds later, the project is over budget and you don't love it.

Reason 2: "Our website is outdated"

Outdated is a feeling, not a brief. Was it built in 2018 and the fonts look old? Was it built in 2023 but the positioning has changed since? Was the design fine but the conversion rate is bad?

Each of those is a different project. A brief that says "outdated" gives the designer no signal about which one.

Reason 3: "Our competitors have better sites"

Sometimes true. Often a distraction. The right question isn't "Why is their site better than ours?" It's "What is our site supposed to do that it isn't doing?" Competitors are a reference point, not the goal. A brief that's secretly "make us look like [competitor]" produces a worse version of [competitor], not a better version of you.

The pre-brief question

Before you write anything, sit with this question for 30 minutes: "In one sentence, what's the specific problem on the current site that's costing us money or pipeline?" If you can't answer in one sentence, the brief will be vague, because the underlying thinking is. Sharpen the sentence first.

What a designer actually needs from a brief

Five things, in order of value.

1. The single most important visitor

Not your full audience matrix. Not "we serve marketing teams, sales teams, and engineering teams." The single highest-stakes visitor, the one whose conversion matters most.

Designers make different decisions for a CTO than for a CMO. They make different decisions for an enterprise buyer than for a self-serve user. Naming one person lets them make confident choices. Naming five people forces them to average, and the average is worse than any specific choice.

2. The state that visitor is in

Not their demographics. Their state. What were they doing 30 seconds before they landed? What problem are they trying to solve? What objections are they carrying?

Example. A SaaS site for legal contract review software. Audience: General Counsel. State: skimming on their phone between meetings, evaluating six potential vendors a peer recommended. Carrying skepticism about AI hallucinations and concern about data privacy. The designer reading that brief knows what to lead with. The designer reading "Audience: legal professionals at growth-stage companies" doesn't.

3. The action you want them to take

One action. Maximum two. The brief is allowed to have a "primary CTA" and a "secondary CTA." That's it.

If your brief lists five possible visitor actions, your homepage will end up with five CTAs competing with each other. CTA discipline starts upstream in the brief.

4. What success looks like in 6 months

Concrete. Measurable. "Conversion rate of homepage-to-demo-booked goes from 1.2% to 3%+. Sales stops complaining the site doesn't qualify. We hire two more roles where the website was part of why candidates came in."

Bad version: "The site will look great and the team will be proud of it." Looks-great is unfalsifiable. A measurable success criterion shapes every downstream decision.

5. The constraints you can't change

Brand colors that are non-negotiable. Copy that's already approved by legal. Integrations that have to work. A launch date that's hard-wired (conference, fundraise, product launch).

Listing constraints in the brief saves both sides the "why didn't you do this?" conversation in week 3. The designer can work creatively within constraints they know about. They can't work creatively around constraints they discover halfway through.

What a designer doesn't need from a brief

Equally important. Things that don't belong in the brief because they crowd out the things that do.

• Your full company history. Three sentences max.
• Your mission statement. Save it for the about page.
• A list of every feature you might want on the site. This produces a 30-page site that ships in 8 months. Give the designer the right to remove features that don't serve the goal.
• Detailed instructions on visual style. "Use a teal accent and rounded corners" is the founder doing the designer's job. State the constraint (brand teal must appear somewhere) and let the designer make the decisions.
• A list of 15 competitors. Pick the 3 most relevant. The rest is noise.

The single best brief I ever received was four pages. The longest one I've seen was 47 pages. The four-page one produced a great project. The 47-page one produced a bad one.

The questions to ask yourself before writing

A pre-brief checklist. Sit with these for 90 minutes before you open the template.

1. What's the single most important visitor? Name the role, the company stage, the specific use case.
2. What state are they in when they land? What were they doing 30 seconds ago, what do they want, what are they worried about?
3. What's the one action I want them to take? Demo, trial, sales call, signup, pick one.
4. What does success look like in 6 months? Concrete numbers, not vibes.
5. What specifically is wrong with the current site? Be precise. Vague answers produce vague briefs.
6. What three sites do I love, and what specifically do I love about each? Not "Apple is great", what specific decision do you respect?
7. What three sites do I hate, and why? The hated examples often matter more than the loved ones.
8. Who is the single decision-maker on the new site? One person. Not a committee.
9. What's my hard timeline? Why that date? What happens if we miss it?
10. What's my budget range, honestly? Not the price you hope to get, the price you'll actually pay.

If you can answer these ten clearly, the brief writes itself. If you can't, the brief will paper over the gaps and the project will reveal them three weeks in.

Common brief mistakes I see weekly

A few patterns that show up over and over.

"Make it bold but professional." These two words usually contradict each other. Pick one. Bold + warm. Bold + restrained. Refined + restrained. Confident + playful. Two-word combinations that don't fight.

"We want it to convert better." Convert how, for whom, doing what? Specify or it doesn't help.

"We trust your judgment, just make it good." Translates to: "I'll know it when I see it, and I'll reject everything until you guess right." Bad clients say this. Good clients give the designer real constraints and real direction.

"Just like Stripe." Stripe has a multi-billion-dollar brand, hundreds of designers, and a decade of refinement. You don't, and that's fine. Asking for "like Stripe" without saying which specific Stripe decision you admire produces an inferior Stripe imitation.

Quoting from competitors' homepages. "We want a hero like [Competitor]'s." The designer reads this and thinks: they don't want a better positioning, they want a copy. Use competitors as one data point, not as the target.

The 1-page brief if you only have an hour

If you have 60 minutes and no template, write one page covering:

• What we do, in one sentence (15 words max)
• Who we're for, specifically (one named role, one specific situation)
• What we want visitors to do (one action)
• What's wrong with the current site (3 bullet points, specific)
• What we love (3 sites, one sentence each on the specific thing)
• What we hate (3 sites, one sentence each)
• Success in 6 months (one measurable outcome)
• Single decision-maker (one name)
• Deadline + budget (one date, one number)

A page like that, written honestly, will produce a better project than a 30-page formal brief written by committee.

The honest test

When you finish your brief, send it to a friend who doesn't know your industry. Ask them to tell you back, in their own words, what the project is. If they can't, the brief is too vague. If they can, the designer probably can too.

The point of a brief isn't to impress. It's to transfer enough understanding that the designer can make confident decisions on your behalf for the next 4–8 weeks. Everything else is paperwork.