Field notes / Websites
A useful website brief is not a forty-page document. It is a clear explanation of the business, the audience, the problem and the outcome.
Igniter Studio · 2 Oct 2026 · 5 min read
A lot of people delay starting a website because they think they need to prepare everything first.
Perfect copy.
Final images.
A complete sitemap.
Brand guidelines.
Competitor analysis.
Detailed wireframes.
A fourteen-page project specification.
You usually do not.
A good website brief can be much simpler.
The purpose of a brief is not to design the website before the designer or developer gets involved.
It is to explain the problem clearly enough that good decisions can begin.
The most useful first question is:
What does the business actually do?
Not the polished marketing version.
The practical version.
What do you sell?
Who buys it?
How does someone normally become a customer?
What is valuable about the service?
What is difficult to explain?
These details influence almost everything that follows.
A website for a local service business behaves differently from a portfolio.
A portfolio behaves differently from a software product.
A software product behaves differently from an e-commerce store.
The website should reflect the business model.
“Need a new website” is not really a project goal.
Why?
Maybe the existing site looks dated.
Maybe customers cannot understand the services.
Maybe people keep calling to ask questions that should be answered online.
Maybe the business wants more enquiries.
Maybe staff manually process bookings.
Maybe a new service is launching.
Maybe the company simply does not have a website at all.
Those are different problems.
And they produce different websites.
A useful brief should explain the change you want the website to create.
Most businesses have more than one audience.
That is fine.
The goal is not necessarily to create a detailed fictional persona called Marketing Manager Michelle who drinks oat lattes.
You just need to understand who is making the decision.
Useful details include:
This makes content much easier to structure.
One of the best sources of website content already exists inside the business.
Emails.
Calls.
Sales conversations.
Messages.
Support requests.
Think about what customers repeatedly ask:
These are signals.
If customers repeatedly need information before they can make a decision, the website should probably help answer it.
Sending five competitor websites and saying:
I like these.
helps a little.
Saying:
I like how this company explains each service clearly.
helps much more.
Or:
I like the confidence of this layout, but I do not want ours to feel this corporate.
That gives direction without asking somebody to copy the design.
Useful references can come from completely different industries.
The important part is identifying what you respond to:
References are communication tools.
They are not specifications.
It is helpful to have source material.
It does not need to be polished.
Existing brochures, old website copy, service notes, emails and internal documents can all be useful.
Even rough bullets are enough to begin understanding the business.
A developer or designer can work with:
Service: Commercial landscaping
That is much more useful than waiting three weeks for a perfect paragraph.
A good brief should also include the boring information.
It matters.
Things such as:
These constraints often shape implementation decisions.
It is better to know them early.
You generally do not need to specify:
Unless those things are genuinely constrained, they are part of the design and development process.
A brief should describe the problem.
Not prematurely prescribe every solution.
At minimum, answer:
What does the business do?
Who is the website primarily for?
Why are we building or rebuilding it?
What should visitors understand?
What should visitors do?
What existing material do we have?
What systems need to connect?
What timeframe and budget are realistic?
That is enough to start a useful conversation.
You can discover the rest together.
The best briefs do not contain every answer.
They make sure everyone is solving the same problem.
Your next chapter starts here
Tell me what you’re working on. I’ll help you find a practical way forward.
Let’s talk about it