How to prepare a brief for a website: a checklist

A brief is a short document that tells the agency what you need and why. It does not have to be perfect or technical. Its job is to give the team enough context to ask the right questions, estimate the work honestly and avoid surprises halfway through the project. Below is the checklist we use with our own clients. Answer what you can. Gaps are fine; we will fill them in together.

1. About the company

• What you do, in two or three sentences, the way you would explain it to a new client.
• Who your clients are: companies or individuals, which cities or countries, which languages they speak.
• Your main competitors, and how you differ from them.

2. The goal of the site

“We need a website” is not a goal. A goal is what should happen after someone lands on the site. For example: leave a request, call the sales team, download a price list, buy a product, apply for a vacancy. There can be several goals, but one should be the main one. It shapes the page structure and what appears on the first screen.

3. Structure and features

• Which sections you expect: services, catalogue, projects, about, contacts, news.
• What the site must do: request forms, online payment, a personal account, a calculator, booking.
• Which languages you need. In Uzbekistan this is usually Russian and Uzbek, and often English too.
• Integrations: CRM, Telegram, 1C, payment systems, maps.

If you are unsure about features, describe the situation instead: “managers lose requests from the website” or “clients keep phoning to ask about prices”. Finding the solution is our job.

4. Content

Content is the most common reason projects stall. Check early what you already have and what still needs to be prepared:

• texts about the company and services;
• photos of products, the team and the office (real photos work better than stock images);
• your logo and brand book, if you have them;
• certificates, licences, and client logos you have permission to show.

5. Examples you like and dislike

Send three to five links to sites you like and explain what exactly you like about them: the layout, the colours, how the catalogue works. Sites you dislike are just as useful. This saves one or two rounds of design revisions.

6. Timing and budget

Name the date you need the site by, and why: an exhibition, a product launch, the start of the season. If you have a budget in mind, give a range. It does not commit you to anything, but it helps us propose a realistic scope rather than an ideal one you will never use.

7. Access and responsibilities

• Who on your side makes decisions and signs off each stage.
• Access to the current domain, hosting and analytics, if a site already exists.
• Who will update the site after launch.

Common mistakes in a brief

• Describing the design instead of the task: “we want a blue website”, without saying who it is for or what it should do.
• Listing every possible feature “just in case”. Each feature costs time and money, and the first version should contain what you need now.
• Leaving content “for later”. The site will be ready, but there will be nothing to put in it.
• Collecting comments from several people when nobody makes the final call.

What happens next

We go through the brief with you in a meeting or on a call, ask our questions, and then prepare a technical specification. It fixes the structure, features, stages and deadlines, and becomes part of the contract. A good brief makes that stage faster and the estimate more accurate.