The single biggest predictor of whether a web project ends well is the quality of the brief at the start. Not the budget. Not the agency. Not even the timeline. A good brief makes a good agency look great. A bad brief makes even an excellent agency miss the mark, because they end up building what was specified instead of what was needed.
After 12 years of receiving briefs from Australian businesses, here is the seven-section structure that we wish every client used before approaching us, and which dramatically improves the outcome of any project we run.
1. The business problem you are solving
Not “we want a new website”. Why do you want a new website? “Leads have flatlined for 12 months and the existing site looks dated” is a brief. “We want to launch a new service line and need a separate hub for it” is a brief. “Our current site embarrasses the team in sales meetings” is a brief.
The business problem should be one paragraph. Without it, the agency does not know what to optimise for. With it, every design and copy decision can be tested against “does this solve the problem?”.
2. Who the site is for
Two or three audience profiles, at most. For each one: who they are, what they came to the site to figure out, what would make them call or sign up, what would make them bounce.
The mistake here is listing every possible audience the business serves. A site cannot be optimised for everyone. The brief should identify the two or three that matter most commercially, and let the agency design for those.
3. What success looks like
Three to five measurable outcomes the site needs to produce. “Increase qualified leads from 12 per month to 25 per month within 6 months of launch.” “Reduce time from first visit to booking from 8 days to 3 days.” “Lift organic traffic by 40 percent over 12 months.”
Concrete numbers force concrete design decisions. A site without success metrics is a site nobody can be accountable for.
4. Three sites you admire and three you hate
Brief this as URLs with one sentence on each explaining why. Reference sites are the fastest way to communicate aesthetic preferences and conventions without trying to describe them in words.
The “sites you hate” half is just as important as the “sites you admire” half. It tells the agency where the rails are.
5. What you have and what you need
Existing brand assets (logo, colour palette, typography, photography). Existing content (copy you can reuse, copy that needs rewriting). Existing infrastructure (current host, domain registrar, third-party integrations).
Clarity here saves the agency days of guessing. Without it, the project starts with a discovery phase that costs you time and money to establish things you already knew.
6. Budget, timeline, and constraints
Be specific about budget. “Between $15,000 and $25,000 depending on scope” is more useful than “competitive”. The agency can scope appropriately and tell you what is realistic in that range.
Timeline matters too. “Need to launch before September” is a constraint. “Aiming for Q4 but flexible” is a different constraint. Both are useful. “As soon as possible” is not useful and usually means the timeline has not actually been thought about.
Constraints to flag: legal or compliance requirements, integrations that must work, accessibility standards required, languages the site must support.
7. The decision-making process
Who signs off on the design? Who signs off on copy? How long does internal approval take? Is there a single point of contact, or does feedback come through a committee?
This is the section most briefs skip and the section that derails the most projects. Agencies can plan around a slow approval cycle if they know about it. They cannot plan around a sudden “actually the founder wants to redesign this” three weeks into build.
What to leave out
Sitemap. The agency should propose this. Detailed page-by-page wireframes. The agency should propose these. Specific technology choices (CMS, framework, page builder) unless you have a real technical constraint.
Briefs that arrive overspecified force the agency to either accept the specifications uncritically or push back and look difficult. Both outcomes are worse than a brief that focuses on outcomes and lets the agency bring its expertise to the how.
Length matters less than clarity
A good brief is three to five pages. A great brief is sometimes shorter. The point is not the page count, it is whether the agency reading the brief can answer two questions: what is the business trying to achieve, and how will we know if we succeeded.
If the answer to either is unclear, the brief is not done yet, regardless of how many pages it spans.
If you are about to brief an agency on a new website and want a partner that runs projects this way, Defyn uses exactly this structure with every new client. Brief Defyn on your project and we will tell you within the first call whether your idea is well-scoped, what is missing, and what the realistic path forward looks like.
