Build a brief a designer can actually quote from.

What a good website brief includes

Most people put off writing a brief because they think it needs to read like a tender document. It does not. A good brief is just clear answers to the questions a designer will ask you anyway, written down once so you never have to repeat yourself across three different calls.

Whatever template or tool you use, it should cover six things:

• What the business does and who the website is for. Two sentences each is plenty.
• The one goal that matters most. A site built to win enquiries looks different from a site built to reassure investors, and a brief that names a single primary goal beats one that lists five.
• The pages and functionality you expect. A best guess is fine. Naming things early is what stops them turning up later as surprises.
• What content already exists. Logo, photography, the words on the pages. Gaps are completely normal, they just need naming so someone owns them.
• A budget band and a rough timeline. Not to trap you, but because both change what a sensible recommendation looks like. My pricing is public, so you can check the bands before you pick one.
• Who makes the final decision. Projects move fastest when this is settled before design starts.

What you can leave out: fonts, colours and instructions about the design itself. That is the work you are hiring a designer to do. If you have strong feelings, put them in the notes, but a brief that describes the problem tends to get a better website than one that prescribes the solution.

On timing, a typical marketing site takes around three weeks to build once the brief and the content are settled. Most delay in web projects comes from unanswered questions, which is exactly what a brief like this removes. I have written a fuller breakdown of how long a website takes if you want the detail.

What happens if you send it to me

I read it. Me personally, not a form inbox, and you get a reply the same working day. If the project looks like a good fit, we book a 30-minute call and go through the brief together. You leave that call with a fixed price, agreed before anything starts, that never moves.

If it is not a good fit, I will say so plainly and point you somewhere better where I can. There is no obligation either way, and the brief stays yours. Print it, copy it, send it to three other designers if you like. Any decent one will be glad to receive it, because a clear brief is rarer than you might think.