Web Design Brief

Company Name

Project: (e.g. Ecommerce website development)

Date:

Contact Name:

1. Background Information

  • New or replacement site?

  • If replacement, what is the current domain (URL) and:

    • Require staging site during build?
    • Analytics used / account access or reports
    • Motivation for change?

  • What are the organisational goals for the website – what do you want to achieve from the new site?

    (Goals should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and have a timeframe)

2. Target Audience

  • Who is your target audience?

    • May be more than one / May be different from your customers

    (For example a non-profit may target individual donations and highlight their work and a second audience is sponsors)

  • Do you have an ideal customer profile?

  • What will they come to your website for? (Articles, reviews, contact details, pricing, etc)

3. Content

  • What does the organisation do? Short summary, with products/services/history etc.
    • List the subject areas – from most important to least
    • Is there a variety of content available (Photos, videos, text, diagrams, etc)
  • Who is going to write the content, or edit the old content for the new site?
  • Which content areas of the site will need to be editable?

4. Call to Action

  • What do you want people to do when they get to the site?

    (Buy from the shop, complete enquiry form, call us, read lots of articles, sign-up to the newsletter, etc)

  • What are the two most important calls to action that will be on the home page?

5. Social Media and Sharing

  • What avenues do you need for sharing your content

    (Links on the page using Social Sharing to LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, etc)

  • What Social Media presence do you have (or need) – and how is that going to be presented on the site

    (Facebook like box, follow us on twitter, and include the latest from your twitter stream etc).

6. Functional Requirements

What are your functional requirements for the site?
Please list below, including content and calls to action, what functions are required in the website:

(e.g. News/articles, social media feeds, members only areas, responsive design - for optimal viewing on mobile and tablet devices)

7. Design Assets

  • Logos, colours, style guide, off-line marketing materials – what do you have/require?

8. Design Ideas

  • If a rebuild of the current site – what do you like / dislike about the current site
  • Three to five websites with design ideas that you like (can be from your industry or another)
  • Competitor’s websites (three to five)

9. Technology issues

  • Domain name account details, hosting, etc – have all the details together to make for a smooth transition to the new site

10. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

  • Do you have a set of priority keywords and phrases?
  • Will this be addressed in the build / how?
  • Content editing to be done with SEO in mind … in-house or by specialist?

11. Practical Issues

  • What’s your budget?

    Expressing how much money you want to spend will enable us to draw up the best proposal for your budget. For example we don’t want to scare you off with a highly complex solution costing £30,000 if your budget is £1,000.

  • Is this budget realistic for the features and functions you want?

  • What are the priority issues, and can it be staged if the budget doesn’t cover the wish-list?

  • Timeline – how long and what’s the deadline

12. Where did you hear about us?

  • Search engine, recommendation, link from another site, other?