How to Brief a Web Designer So You Actually Get What You Need

Most bad website projects do not start with a bad designer. They start with a bad brief.

The brief is the bit nobody wants to do. You have a business to run. You just want a nice website. Surely the designer should figure out what you need and tell you, right?

That is the fastest way to end up with a site that looks fine but does not do its job. Then you spend months going back and forth, paying for revisions, and slowly realising the whole thing missed the point.

A good brief does not have to be long. It has to be clear. Here is what to put in it.

1. Start with the outcome, not the website

Most briefs open with something like: "I need a five page website with a homepage, an about page, services, blog, and contact."

That is a shopping list. It is not a brief.

What the designer actually needs to know is the outcome you want. Are you trying to get more enquiries from local searches? Replace a website that looks dated? Build trust with bigger clients you are pitching? Sell a product directly? Get bookings without picking up the phone every time?

Same number of pages, completely different design decisions.

If you tell a designer "I want more enquiries from people searching locally for X service," they can build the right thing. If you give them a list of pages, they will guess.

2. Describe the customer in one paragraph

Who is the website for? Not "everyone." Not "anyone who needs my service."

Pick the person you most want more of. The customer who pays on time, does not haggle, refers others, and is a pleasure to work with.

Write a paragraph about them. What do they do? What problem are they trying to solve when they land on your site? What would make them trust you in thirty seconds? What would make them bounce?

That paragraph is more useful than ten pages of feature requests. It is the thing the designer keeps coming back to whenever they have to make a call about copy, layout, photos, or tone.

3. Be honest about the current state

If you have an existing site, say what works and what does not. If you have no site, say what you have been doing instead. Facebook page, Google Business profile, word of mouth, paid ads, nothing at all.

Tell the designer:

• where most of your enquiries currently come from
• what people usually ask before they buy
• what you wish they understood sooner
• what objections you hear over and over

That is gold. It tells the designer exactly which questions the new site needs to answer up front.

4. Show examples - and explain what you like

"Make it look like this site" is a bad instruction on its own. "Make it look like this site, because the headline tells me what they do in two seconds and the photos look like real customers" is a great instruction.

Find three or four sites you like. They do not need to be in your industry. For each one, write a sentence about what specifically you like. Layout, tone, colour, the way they handle pricing, the way they show reviews, whatever it is.

Then show one or two sites you do not like, with a sentence about why. That stops the designer from pulling in the wrong kind of inspiration.

5. Be clear about budget and timeline

This one feels uncomfortable. People worry that if they say their budget out loud, the designer will quote exactly that number.

A good designer will not. A good designer needs to know the budget so they can tell you what is realistic, where to spend the money, and what to leave for a later phase.

If you have ten thousand pounds and you want a custom photoshoot, a copywriter, a custom illustration set, a booking system, and a multilingual site, somebody is going to be disappointed. Better to know that on day one than three weeks in.

Same with timeline. If you need it live before a trade show, say so. If there is no rush, say that too. Both are useful.

6. Say who is making the decisions

This is where projects quietly go wrong.

If five people in your business get a say on every design decision, the project will take three times longer and the result will be a compromise nobody loves. That is not a designer problem. That is a process problem.

Pick one person who owns the decisions. Other people can give input, but one person says yes or no. Tell the designer who that is on day one.

7. Say what you do not want to deal with

A lot of business owners want a great website but do not want to spend their evenings learning a content management system, fighting with stock photo libraries, or writing copy from scratch.

That is fine. Say so.

If you want someone to write the copy for you, say so. If you want a system where you can update text yourself but do not want to touch layout, say so. If you never want to think about hosting, SSL, or backups, say so.

The designer can build the project around what you actually want to be involved in, instead of handing you a website you secretly resent owning.

8. Skip the jargon

You do not need to know what a CMS is, or what "responsive design" means, or whether you need a "headless" anything. Anyone who tries to make you feel small for not knowing those words is doing you a favour, because you can take your money somewhere else.

Describe what you want in plain language. "I want to be able to add a new page when we launch a new service." "I want the contact form to email me straight away." "I want it to load fast on phones." That is enough.

A good designer will translate that into the technical decisions and explain anything you actually need to understand.

A simple brief template

If you want something to work from, here is a brief that fits on one page:

• What we do, in one sentence
• The customer we want more of
• The main outcome we want from this website (one thing)
• What we currently use, and what is not working about it
• Three sites we like, and why
• One site we do not like, and why
• Budget range (a band is fine)
• Ideal launch date, and whether it is hard or soft
• Who owns the decisions on our side
• Things we do not want to deal with ourselves

That is it. Ten bullets. If you can fill those in honestly, you will get a much better result than a fifteen page document full of feature requests.

Why this matters

A website project goes wrong when the designer is guessing what success looks like and the business owner is guessing what the designer needs. Both sides end up frustrated, and the website ends up as a polite compromise.

A short, honest brief fixes most of that on day one. It does not lock you in. It just gives both sides the same picture of what you are actually trying to build.

If you cannot answer those ten bullets yet, that is also useful information. It usually means the next step is not "find a designer." It is "spend half a day getting clear on what you want from your online presence." That half day will save you weeks later.