How to brief a web designer: six questions worth answering first

Most first messages to a web designer say something like “I need a website, how much?” It is a fair question, but nobody can give you a real price from it. A short brief changes that. It does not need to be long or technical, and most of it you can answer already.

These are the six questions our own brief asks, and why each one is there.

1. What do you need built?

Pick whichever is closest: a website, a web app, a marketplace, a mobile app, or not sure yet. Then say what it is in one line. You don’t need to know the right label. Working that out is part of the designer’s job, and your one line says more than the label does.

2. Who will be using it?

Your customers, your staff, or both. A site for people finding you for the first time is built differently from one your regular customers log into every week.

3. What problem are you solving?

This is the part most people skip and most projects fail on. If there’s a way this gets done today, say what’s wrong with it. If it’s a brand new idea, say what people can’t do yet. A designer who understands the problem can tell you when a simpler answer will do, and when what you have asked for will not solve it.

4. What must it actually do?

List what it has to do, not how it should look: bookings, payments, customer accounts, file uploads, messaging, reviews. Don’t worry about whether it is realistic. That is for the designer to tell you.

This answer is also where a project finds its size. A site people read and contact you from is a website, and ours start from £500. The moment people need to log in and do something, it is a web application, from £2,000. What a £500 website actually includes shows where that line falls.

5. When do you need it, and what have you got to spend?

A rough range is fine for both, and “I genuinely don’t know” is an honest budget answer. A range lets a designer tell you whether they are the right fit before either of you spends time on it. If a deadline cannot move, say so now. A website usually takes us one to two weeks.

6. Anything else we should know?

Competitors you like, something you’ve tried before that didn’t work, a deadline that isn’t moving. Skip it if there’s nothing.

What you get back

Our brief asks these six questions and takes about a minute. It also asks where to send the result: a written project brief in your inbox, setting out what you are building, who it is for, the problem, what it must do, your timeline and your budget. You can download it too, and it prints to PDF. Keep it, take it to another developer, or ignore it entirely. Everything you tell us is confidential, and we reply the same working day.

Then comes discovery: we keep asking questions until we understand what has to be built. For a website that costs you nothing, and you click through a working prototype before you pay anything. For a web application or platform there is a discovery fee, agreed in writing before it starts and credited in full against the build if you go ahead.