Galactia

How to brief a website designer

A brief is not a specification. It is one page, written before you talk to anyone, that answers five things the project will otherwise answer late and badly.

You do not need design vocabulary to write it. You need to have decided.

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The five

If you are unsure what to ask for on the third one, check who holds the keys on your current site first. That is how most owners find out the answer is “I would have to ask”.

  1. 01

    What the site has to do

    Not “look more professional”. Something you could check: explain the two services people actually buy, let a referred person see finished work, take an enquiry that reaches you. Write the job, not the adjective.

  2. 02

    Who it is for

    Someone who was recommended arrives knowing your name. Someone from a search does not. If most of your work is referred, say so — it changes what the first screen has to carry.

  3. 03

    What you expect to own

    The domain, the code, the content, the accounts, and whether anything stops working if you stop paying.

  4. 04

    When you need it

    A date is less useful than an honest answer about your own availability. Projects stall on approvals, not on build time. If you can look at copy once a week and not more, write that down.

  5. 05

    Who writes the words

    One sentence, with a name attached. This is the one that goes wrong, so it has its own section below.

Who writes the words

Owners usually assume copy is included. Providers usually assume the client is sending it. Both sides discover the gap after the design is approved, which is the most expensive moment to find it.

Practitioner analysis of website procurement makes the same point and puts content ahead of every technical issue as a cause of delay. Scope checklists treat it as four separate questions: who writes it, who edits it, who approves it, who puts it on the page. Both checked 15 September 2026.

So answer it in the brief, in one sentence. “I will write it” is a complete answer. “You write it, I approve it” is a complete answer. “We will sort it out” is the one that costs money.

I write the copy first and you approve it before I design anything. That is my sequence, not a rule. But whoever you hire, settle this before anyone draws a layout, because the layout is shaped by the words it has to hold.

What to leave out

A brief gets worse when it grows.

Leave out page-by-page specifications. You are buying judgement about structure; if you have already fixed it, say why. Leave out a design direction copied from a site you admire in another industry — send it as a reference if you like, but do not write it as a requirement. Leave out a budget you invented to sound serious.

Leave out the technology choice unless you can say what depends on it. “It must be WordPress” is a constraint worth stating if your team already runs WordPress. It is worth dropping if you are repeating something you were told once. I do not use WordPress, which is a real reason not to hire me and a reason to say it in the brief rather than discover it on a call.

Send the same page to everyone.

The replies become comparable, because everyone is answering the same page instead of proposing a different job.

Then read the reply itself.

Someone who asks a question your brief did not anticipate has read it. Someone who sends a proposal that ignores it has told you, for free, how the project would go.

Cinema 7

Micky Sabat’s film and photography studio in Sydney. Referred people look the studio up. The copy was agreed and approved before the design, which is the sequence above with a real job attached.

I did not keep a brief document from that project, so there is no template to hand you here. The five questions are the ones the work answers, not a form he filled in. It is live at cinema7.com.au.

Read the case study

If that is the job

I plan, write, design and build it as one project. You approve the words before I design. At handover you get the files, the accounts and the notes, and you do not need a subscription to keep the site live.

If your brief tells me a website is the wrong job, I will say so before you spend anything. How a rebuild runs.

Send me the brief

I reply within 24 hours.