How to Brief a Web Agency: The Template Founders Actually Need

Most project briefs are too vague to quote from. They describe what the company does, list some competitor sites, say "something clean and modern," and ask for a price. The agency either guesses at scope (producing an inaccurate quote) or asks clarifying questions for two weeks (wasting everyone's time).

A well-written brief takes two to three hours. It produces faster, more accurate quotes, reduces back-and-forth during design, and sets the quality bar for the entire project.

Here's what to include.

The project brief template

Section 1: Company context (10 minutes)

Who you are:

• Company name, stage (pre-seed / seed / Series A / etc.)
• What you do, in one sentence, written for someone who doesn't know your industry
• Who your customers are (job title, company size, industry)
• Where you are in the product lifecycle (pre-launch, launched, growing)

Why this project is happening now:

• A specific trigger: fundraising announcement, product launch, rebrand, old site embarrassing
• The deadline, if there is one (hard deadline or preferred deadline?)
• What's been tried before (previous agency? In-house? What worked and didn't?)

Section 2: Goals and success criteria (15 minutes)

This section is the most important and most often skipped.

Primary goal: What does success look like in concrete terms? Not "a better website" — that's a preference. A goal is: "200 demo requests in the first 90 days" or "our conversion rate from organic traffic to signup goes from 1.2% to 3%" or "investors who see this site before the round closes come to the call already interested."

Secondary goals: What else would this project accomplish if it worked well? SEO rankings? Brand consistency across channels? Sales enablement (something to send prospects)?

Metrics you already have: Current conversion rate, current traffic, current Lighthouse score if known. These give the agency a baseline for what "better" means.

Section 3: Scope (20 minutes)

Be exhaustive here. Agencies quote based on scope. An incomplete scope produces an inaccurate quote.

Pages required: List every page. Not "a blog" — "blog listing page + individual post template." Not "about" — "about page with team section and company timeline."

Functional requirements: Forms (how many, what happens on submit?). Animations (describe or reference). CMS (yes/no, for which sections?). Multiple languages (which ones?). User accounts (any gated content?). Integrations (HubSpot, Intercom, Calendly, Stripe, etc.).

Technical requirements: Any hosting preference? Any constraints from existing infrastructure? Analytics platform? GDPR compliance region? Accessibility standard?

Out of scope: List things you explicitly don't want in this project. "No video in the hero." "No blog in this version." "No multilingual in this phase." This protects everyone.

Section 4: Design direction (20 minutes)

This section prevents the most common source of late-project conflict.

Reference sites: Three to five sites you find excellent. For each one, specify: what specifically you like about it (the typography? The colour use? The animation style? The information density?). Don't just paste links — the interpretation of "I like this site" varies wildly.

Reference sites you dislike: Two or three examples of what you don't want. Same requirement: explain why. "Too cluttered" or "feels corporate and cold" is enough.

Brand assets you have: Logo (in which formats?). Colour palette (defined or to be defined?). Typography (defined or to be defined?). Photography (custom, stock, or none?). Illustration style?

Tone words: Three to five adjectives that describe how the site should feel. "Serious and trustworthy" is different from "friendly and approachable" is different from "bold and technical." This isn't creative direction — it's alignment before the creative work starts.

Section 5: Content (15 minutes)

Content is the most underspecified part of most briefs and the most common cause of timeline overruns.

Copy responsibility: Who writes the copy? In-house? Hired copywriter? The agency? If the agency is writing copy, that's a separate scope item. If you're writing it, when will it be ready?

Assets: Who provides photography and video? Will there be custom illustration? Stock images acceptable? What's the budget for visual assets beyond design and development?

Content availability: Is all content ready now? Partially ready? To be produced during the project? If content is produced during the project, the timeline gates on when it's ready — not when design finishes.

Section 6: Budget and timeline (5 minutes)

Budget range: Give an honest range. "€5,000–€10,000" is more useful than "we're looking for competitive quotes." Agencies who work within your range will tell you what's possible. Agencies who can't will tell you that immediately. Vague budget signals waste everyone's time.

Timeline: Hard deadline (date) or preferred deadline (range)? What's driving the deadline? Can it flex? Timeline pressure affects quality — an agency that knows you have 6 weeks vs. 16 weeks will scope and staff accordingly.

Common brief mistakes

Writing about the company instead of the project. A three-paragraph company history is interesting but not scoping information. Start from the project goals.

Listing inspiration sites without explaining the inspiration. Agencies receive hundreds of sites as "inspiration." Without explanation, they're guessing what you liked.

Omitting technical constraints. "We need this to integrate with our existing auth system" is information that belongs in the brief. Finding this out in week four of the project causes scope changes and timeline extensions.

Not discussing content ownership. The single most common cause of timeline overruns is waiting for client-provided content. If copy, photos, and videos aren't ready when design completes, the project stops.

Treating budget as secret. Budget is engineering information. Disclosing it upfront produces better-scoped proposals. Hiding it produces guessing.

What a good brief produces

A well-written brief typically receives proposals within 48–72 hours instead of 2 weeks. The proposals are more comparable (agencies worked from the same information, so you can assess like-for-like). The first design round has fewer surprises (less interpretation was required). The project moves faster (fewer discovery questions needed during build).

Two hours of brief writing routinely saves four to six weeks of project friction.

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Want to use our brief template directly? Start a conversation and we'll send you our one-page brief format — the same one we use with every new client.