How to Create a Website Brief to Save Your Business Time and Money
Do I Really Need a Website Brief?
This week Daniel has his say on Website Briefs, also commonly known Creative Briefs or RFPs. They can be a fundamental tool for helping website projects get off the ground.
So, why do we need a website brief?
Clients often approach us without any real idea of what they want. They just want a cost “for a website.”
It doesn’t quite work like that. I’ll explain why.
A website site brief defines the aims of the project. Whether your project is a website, a mobile app or web systems software there needs to be a set of aims that will help you to reach the end goal.
A brief will allow you to specify exactly what you want.
It’s a similar concept when you’re looking for a car.
So, if I walk in the Mercedes dealership and say, “I want a car” the salesperson has very little to go on.
They don’t know what size of car you’d like, the colour, the engine size or any additional features you’d like. It’s time consuming and frustrating.
The website brief helps to remove this frustration and quickly puts everyone on the same page.
It helps simplify and smooth out the journey from A to B. By defining what you like and dislike about your current site and perhaps highlighting what you like about other sites too gives the design and development teams lots of useful information.
The website brief also enables you to define an ideal target market. Whether this is local, national or global it helps again to focus the design and content development.
Be transparent with your budget. When you select a design and development team they are working with you as an extended part of your team to realise your business goals.
An early conversation about your budget will also help you to be realistic about your expectations and allow your development partner to offer you the best solution.
We’ll talk further about managing expectations in a future video.
Always remember that the creation of your website brief is perhaps the most important step you’ll take towards a successful project. Take the time to get it right and it’ll be a massive advantage.