In shortA brief is not a specification of the website. It is a specification of the problem — and the more precisely you state the problem, the less of your budget gets spent discovering it.
Why the brief is worth an hour.
Most redesign requests arrive as a sentence: our site is outdated, what would you charge. Every agency then spends its first conversation asking the same dozen questions, and every quote is built on slightly different guesses about the answers. That is the main reason quotes for the same project vary so widely.
An hour spent writing this down means every agency prices the same job, you can compare the responses honestly, and you find out early which of them actually read it.
Write it in your own words. There is no advantage in sounding technical, and a brief full of borrowed jargon is harder to price than one that plainly describes the business.
1. The business
Three or four sentences. The goal is that a stranger could explain what you do.
What the business does, and for whom
Plain description. Include the kind of customer, because a site selling to homeowners and a site selling to facilities managers are different projects even in the same trade.
Where you operate
A service radius, a list of towns, a single location, or nationwide. This shapes the whole structure of the site and is frequently left out.
What makes people choose you over the alternative
Answer honestly rather than aspirationally. If it is that you answer the phone and turn up when you said you would, write that — it is more useful than a value proposition.
How work reaches you today
Referrals, search, repeat customers, a directory, paid ads. An agency needs to know whether the site is the front door or a reference people check after being recommended.
2. The current site
Facts, not judgments. "It looks dated" is less useful than any of these.
The address, and roughly when it was built
Plus any significant changes since. "Rebuilt in 2016, new service pages added in 2021" tells an agency a lot about what they will find.
What it runs on, if you know
WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, something custom, "no idea". "No idea" is a perfectly acceptable answer and is itself informative.
Who can currently edit it
You, a staff member, the original developer, nobody. If nobody can, say so — it usually means the platform is the real problem.
Roughly how many pages
A guess is fine here as long as it is labelled as a guess. Any agency should verify it themselves before quoting.
What already works
The most-skipped question in any brief and one of the most valuable. Pages that rank, content customers refer to, a booking flow people actually use. These are the things a redesign must not break.
3. What is wrong
Be specific. Each item here should be something you could show someone.
The problem in one sentence
Not "it needs modernizing". Something like: people call to ask questions the site should already answer, or it is unusable on a phone, or we cannot add a service page without paying someone.
What customers say about it
Direct quotes if you have them. "I could not find your prices" from a real customer is worth more than any amount of internal opinion.
What you cannot do today
Update it yourself, add locations, take bookings, show your work, be found for a specific service.
Anything that is actively broken
The contact form, the phone link on mobile, the gallery. Say so — these are often cheap to fix and worth fixing regardless of whether a redesign happens.
4. What success looks like
The section that most changes the quality of the responses, because it tells an agency what to optimize for.
What should happen more often after launch
More calls, more quote requests, more booked appointments, fewer basic questions by phone, more applications. Pick one primary outcome — a site optimized for everything is optimized for nothing.
How you will know
Even roughly. "We currently get about four enquiries a week and would like to know if that changes" is a perfectly good measure and better than none.
What must not get worse
Search traffic, existing customer workflows, the phone number people have saved. This is the sentence that gets your existing URLs taken seriously.
5. Scope and practicalities
The answers here move the price more than anything in the design sections.
Who is writing the content
You, them, or a mix. Answer this honestly — a plan where you write it and then do not is the most common reason projects stall for months.
Do you have photography
Real photographs of your own work, premises and people are the single strongest trust signal a small business site has. If you do not have them, say so, so a shoot can be priced rather than assumed.
Does anything need to connect to anything
Booking, payments, a CRM, an inventory system, a quoting tool. List everything, including tools you plan to adopt later.
Do you need to edit it yourself
And who specifically will be doing it, with what level of comfort. This decides the CMS and the handover.
Budget range and timing
Include a range even if it feels uncomfortable. Without one, every agency guesses, and the quotes you receive will be answers to different questions. A range also lets an honest agency tell you early that it is not realistic — which saves you both weeks.
Any fixed deadline, and what drives it
A trade show, a rebrand, a hosting contract ending. A deadline with a reason is workable; a deadline without one usually moves.
What to leave out.
Things that feel like good briefing and are not.
- A list of websites you like, with no note on what you like about each — otherwise it reads as "make it blue"
- Specific technology demands, unless you have a real constraint; you are buying an outcome
- A page-by-page structure you have already decided, which prevents anyone from improving it
- Exact wording for headlines, unless it is a legal or brand requirement
- Anything you would not be willing to be held to — a brief is a shared reference, not a wish list
What to expect back from a good agency.
Use the responses to compare teams, not just prices.
- Questions that show they read it, especially about the "what already works" section
- A page count they verified themselves rather than repeating your guess
- An explicit statement about what happens to your existing URLs
- A clear scope boundary — what is included and, more usefully, what is not
- Staged payments tied to real milestones
- A named person who will be doing the work, not just selling it
- Willingness to tell you the project is smaller than you thought, if it is