How to brief a web project so it actually gets built

Most project briefs describe a website. The useful ones describe a result.

We've quoted hundreds of projects. The briefs that turn into great builds are clear about what the thing is supposed to do once it exists, and the ones that stall in revisions aren't. Budget almost never comes into it.

Here's what actually helps.

1. Name the result, not the pages

"We need a five-page site with a gallery" is a specification. "We need people who find us on Instagram to book a tour without emailing us" is a brief.

The second one tells us what success looks like, so we can argue for the structure that gets you there and tell you when a page you asked for isn't earning its place.

2. Say where you are today

A blank page, a set of designs waiting to be built, and a live site that's underperforming are very different places to start. Each one means a completely different first week of work. A rescue job on someone else's codebase is a different craft than a clean build.

3. Bring the honest constraint

Timelines and budgets are inputs, so don't treat them as a test.

A studio that knows you have eight weeks and a fixed number will propose something achievable and good. If it has to guess at both, it'll propose something safe, or something impossible. Neither serves you.

Honest ranges get honest plans. Vagueness gets padding.

4. Show us three things you love, and why

Reference links are more useful than adjectives, but only with your reasoning attached. "I like this one" doesn't tell us much. "I like how this one makes you feel like you're moving through a space" tells us what to protect when we make trade-offs later.

Include something you dislike too. Knowing the ditch on either side of the road helps more than knowing the destination.

5. Decide who decides

The single most common reason a project doubles in length is a review process where feedback arrives from four people who disagree with each other. Scope is further down the list.

Name one person who can say yes. Everyone else advises.

The question worth asking yourself first

Before you send anything, answer this:

If this project works perfectly, what changes in the business?

It could be more bookings or fewer support emails. Or a price you can finally charge. If you can answer it in a sentence, you're ready to brief, and any decent studio will be able to tell you within one call whether your idea and your budget are in the same room.

If you can't answer it yet, that's fine. That calls for a strategy conversation, and it's worth having before anyone opens a design tool.

When you're ready, our intake walks through most of this in about two minutes.