How to prepare a website brief
“Make it beautiful and modern” is the most expensive brief. Without answers to a few simple questions the quote floats, the timeline slips, and halfway through someone remembers a catalog and payments. A website brief is not a 40-field form. It is a short document so the studio and you mean the same project.
What to answer before kickoff
- Goal. Leads, calls, sales, a tender brochure, a client cabinet?
- Audience. B2B or retail, city, language (RU / KY / EN).
- Site type. Landing, corporate, store, service — or “not sure yet”.
- Pages and features. Services, pricing, blog, filters, payments, 1C, WhatsApp.
- Content. Copy and photos ready / need a writer / “do it like the competitor”.
- Deadline and budget. At least a range: “needed by date” and “around $X”.
- Who approves. One decision maker or a committee of five — that changes the calendar a lot.
On the Tim Djol site there is a short brief: type, budget, phone. That is enough for a first range. For a precise quote, add competitor links and 5–10 “like / don’t like” examples.
Materials worth collecting
- logo, brand colors, fonts (if you have a brand book);
- a list of services and real differences vs competitors — facts, not “we are the best”;
- photos: team, sites, products. Faceless stock cuts trust;
- access later: domain, hosting, analytics — at the start a list of who owns them is enough;
- legal: details, offer, privacy — if you sell or take online payments.
Missing copy is not a hard stop. But plan time for approvals. Projects stall less on layout and more on “wait, the director is still editing that paragraph”.
How we read a brief
From the brief we pick a format: landing, corporate site, or store. Then we give a timeline and budget range, clarify the hard parts (integrations, languages, SEO moves), and only after that lock the quote in a contract.
A good brief saves 1–2 weeks of chat. A weak one turns “a site in three weeks” into endless revisions with no clear definition of done.
Common brief failures
- goal “make it pretty” with no success metric;
- only foreign premium references on a landing-page budget;
- “make it like theirs” without rights to that design and without your own offer;
- no content owner — copy freezes for two weeks every sprint;
- integrations appear after the design is approved.
If you do not know the site type, say so. An honest “not sure yet” beats picking a store when you needed a landing page.
Ready to draft a brief?
Answer the seven points above in a message — or fill the form on the services page. We will reply with a format, timeline, budget range, and what to prepare before kickoff.
