What’s the big deal about writing a website brief?

The website of a company, with its services or products, is often a key point to the consumer. It’s like an online office, so it’s very important to present services and products as authentic as possible, and to share relevant information with consumers.

Below is a short research made by Kibo’s Consumer Trends Report in 2017. It’s about consumer shopping habits and online research made before shopping:

• 94% of consumers do their research online before visiting a store
• 81% of consumers said they have looked up inventory on a retailer’s website before visiting the store and 80% are less inclined to visit a store if a website does not provide current product availability
• 92% of consumers reported interactive content influences them to make a purchase
• 93% of consumers have reviewed product ratings before purchasing an item

How to get started?

Whether you’re developing the website in-house or with an agency, before you start writing a website brief, there are a couple of things you need to really think about. Basically, this is your business investment that’ll help you in long-term planning and attracting new customers, as well as building your revenue, so you need to approach it as such.

So, what are those main segments of the brief you really need to think about?

1. Business background – details about the client as well as products and services
2. Your long-term business goals
3. Goals and objectives you want the website to achieve
4. Your unique sales proposition
5. How you want be perceived and positioned on the market
6. What you like and dislike on your current website (if you have it)
7. Target groups for your products and services
8. Specific markets you want to target
9. Your competition
10. Benchmarks you aspire to be
11. Special features you’d like to add (e.g. multiple language support, registration, user profiles, online payment, booking engine etc.)
12. Website materials (visuals and text) – what’s available and what needs to be produced
13. Preferred deadline for project delivery
14. Budget you’re willing to invest

Segments listed above need to be in every website brief. Why? So the company creating the website could understand your plans, needs, business, goals and most importantly, your consumers.

If you don’t have the answers to all these questions, that’s not unusual. That just means you need to surround yourself with stakeholders interested in helping you get the most out of the project, and dig deeper. From our experience, that is most easily achieved with a discovery workshop.

Going through the workshop

If you’re not sure how to fill out a website brief, there is another solution – the Discovery Workshop.

Discovery workshop is an in-depth analysis of your business, and it’s a part of the definition and planning phase of the website production process. Before we get started with production, it is crucial to understand every aspect of the project. This includes sharing the perspective, expected user behaviour, business goals and the overall vision. When set-up properly, this phase is guaranteed to ensure efficiency throughout the production process.

This type of workshop is recommended for clients who want to have a detailed strategy for a new venture they’re diving into and need business support, as well as for those who want to make very complex websites with lots of features.

Know your business

While writing a website brief, you need to focus on your company’s challenges, opportunities, targets and markets. It is very important you share the same vision and expectations with the company creating your website. When a company and the client are fully on the same page, then the final solution (in this case a website) is the right one for the business – one that will help the client achieve its business goals.

Website brief is a click away

To help you out with writing out a website brief, we created a detailed template. If you’re interested in cooperating with a company that’s not just a supplier, but a partner in business, contact us!