As much as it would be wonderful for web designers to be able to read minds and instinctively understand what it is you’re looking for from your website, the truth is that often there is a real disconnect between what you want and what you get. That is unless you are able to provide a specific brief that covers all the vital elements of your website requirements.
Hopefully, you’ve already used our free website calculator tool which will have given you a good idea of some of the key considerations, and in this blog we’ll help you refine your brief a little more. Here are some of the key components of a good website brief:
The big messages
We’ll go over all this info with you, and although it may be obvious we will need all the most important bits of information about your business. That means your full name, strapline, address, email and contact details, social media accounts etc. We’ll also need an introductory paragraph about your business and an idea of your target customer/audience demographic. The more content you have for us to popular the site with the better, although don’t worry if you’ve not got this as we can help with content writing – and in the meantime we can use placeholder text so as not to slow things down.
Supporting information
Old websites, brochures, business and marketing strategies… most businesses have a plethora of documentation that is either still in use or obsolete. All this information can be really useful for us to review, so fire it over!
What you don’t like is as important as what you do like
As WordPress website designers, it’s really useful for us to see some examples of competitors’ websites which are working in a similar space to you. And when it comes to look and feel, they don’t even have to be competitors – as long as we can see what you love about a website’s flow and design we’ll be able to emulate that for you.
But it’s just as interesting for us to know what you don’t like. That can be particularly telling and will help guide our design decisions as we go. So be sure to fire over a couple of sites that leave you cold, and don’t forget to tell us why!
Your budget
Of course, we need to have a really clear idea of your budget in order to create a website for you that will suit your needs but also be affordable (you can spread the cost with FlexiPay if you’d like – clients often find this a great way to take the initial heat off).
While the perfect website design brief probably does exist somewhere, we are very capable of filling in the gaps and coming back to you for any extra information we might need. So don’t let that stop you from getting in touch – we can work together to design a brief that is bang-on – so you’ll know what you’re getting and we’ll know how to deliver it. Give us a call today.
