In this guide · 8 sections
Short answer
A good website brief covers goals, audience, pages, features and integrations, content owner, domain and email access, competitors you like, budget range and deadline. Send the same brief to every designer so their quotes can be compared line by line.
Why a website brief saves you money
Without a brief, each designer guesses what you want, so one quotes for five pages and another for twelve, and you cannot tell which is cheaper. Items left vague ("a booking feature", "some SEO") become change requests after you have paid the deposit.
A brief also protects the timeline. The most common reason small business websites launch late is not design or code; it is waiting for text, photos and logins from the business. Deciding those owners up front fixes that. When the quotes come back, our guide to website quote red flags shows how to compare them.
The website brief template (copy this)
Copy the headings below into a document and answer each in a few lines. Short answers are fine. "Not sure" is a useful answer too, because it tells the designer where you need advice.
| Section | What to write | Example answer |
|---|---|---|
| 1. About the business | What you sell, to whom, where | Physiotherapy clinic, two outlets, adults with sports injuries |
| 2. Goal of the site | The one action you want visitors to take | Book an assessment online |
| 3. Audience | Who visits, on what device, in which languages | Mostly mobile, English, some Chinese speakers |
| 4. Pages | Every page you need | Home, Services (6), About, Team, Pricing, FAQ, Contact, Privacy |
| 5. Features and integrations | Forms, booking, payments, shop, chat, CRM, newsletter | Booking linked to our clinic system; WhatsApp button |
| 6. Content | Who writes text, supplies photos, by when | We write text by 15 Nov; designer sources 10 stock photos |
| 7. Look and feel | Sites you like and why; brand colours, logo files | Clean, lots of white space; logo in SVG attached |
| 8. Competitors | Two or three local competitors | Links to three clinic websites |
| 9. Technical | Domain, DNS, email, hosting, current site | Domain at a registrar we control; email on Microsoft 365 |
| 10. Budget and deadline | Range, hard dates, who signs off | S$2,000-3,000; live before 1 March; owner approves |
Goals, pages and features: be specific
The goal decides the design. A site built to get bookings puts the booking button on every page; a site built for credibility with corporate buyers puts case studies and certifications first. Write one main goal and, at most, two secondary ones.
- Pages: list them, including the boring ones (privacy policy, terms, 404 page, thank-you page after a form). Our privacy policy and cookie consent guide explains what PDPA expects.
- Services or products: say how many. Six service pages is a very different quote from one long page.
- Forms: what each form collects and where the enquiry goes (which email, a CRM, WhatsApp).
- Booking or payments: name the system you use or want, and whether customers pay a deposit online.
- Languages: a second language roughly doubles the content work. Say so now.
- Blog or news: will you actually post? If not, skip it.
If a feature is a nice-to-have, label it that way. Designers can then quote it as an option rather than fold it into the base price.
Content: who writes, who supplies photos, and by when
Decide this before you sign. Copywriting and photography explain a large part of the gap between quotes, and many quotes quietly assume you supply both.
You supply content
- Lower quote
- You know your services best
- Faster if text already exists
Designer supplies content
- Higher quote (copywriting, photography)
- Needs interviews or a questionnaire
- Usually better structured for search
Either way, give one person in your business the job of answering content questions and approving pages, and put a date next to each content item in the brief. Google's SEO Starter Guide is a good plain-English read for whoever writes the text: it stresses helpful, original content written for people, with descriptive page titles.
Technical details most briefs forget
These items rarely appear in a brief, and they are where launches go wrong. Answering them in advance avoids a broken email account on launch day.
Technical section of your brief
On speed, Google's Core Web Vitals define good as Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less, and Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less. On accessibility, WCAG 2.2 (published October 2023) is the current W3C standard; level AA is the usual target. Putting both in the brief makes them part of the deliverable, not an extra.
Budget, timeline and sign-off
Give a budget range. Designers can then tell you what fits, rather than quote high to be safe or low to win the job. Our website cost guide shows typical ranges for each type of site in Singapore.
State hard dates and why
A launch event, a grant claim deadline or a lease start. Soft dates can be negotiated; hard ones decide the scope.
Name the person who approves
One decision-maker avoids rounds of conflicting feedback from several partners.
Agree the number of revision rounds
Two rounds of changes on the design and one on built pages is common. Write it down.
Ask what happens after launch
Who updates plugins, renews SSL and fixes bugs, and what it costs per month or per hour.
Send the same brief to every designer
Ask for an itemised quote against your sections, so you can compare like with like.
Before you sign, read the contract against our website design contract checklist.
Do it yourself or get help?
Most owners can fill in the template in an hour. The parts that benefit from help are working out the pages and features you actually need, and checking the technical section before a designer touches your DNS.
If you would rather send the brief to us, we quote fixed prices against it: a Landing Page (S$690) for a single campaign page, a Business Website (S$1,490) for a standard small business site, or Website Pro (S$2,990) for larger sites with more pages and integrations.
Frequently asked questions
At minimum: what the business does, the main goal of the site, the audience, a list of every page, features and integrations such as booking or payments, who supplies text and photos and by when, websites you like, technical details about your domain and email, a budget range and the deadline. One or two pages is enough for most small business sites.
For a small business website, one or two pages is plenty. The aim is to be specific, not long. A clear list of pages, features and content owners is more useful to a designer than several paragraphs about brand values. If you have a lot to say about look and feel, add links to example sites instead.
Yes, as a range. Without it, designers either quote high to cover unknowns or propose something that does not fit. A range lets them suggest what is realistic and which features to phase in later. Send the same range to everyone you ask, so the quotes stay comparable.
It helps. If you write that the site should meet WCAG 2.2 level AA and pass Core Web Vitals on mobile, those become part of what you are paying for and can be checked before final payment. Leaving them out often means they are treated as optional extras or not tested at all.
Launching a new website usually means changing DNS records at your domain. If the person making the change does not know where your email is hosted, they can break incoming email by overwriting MX records. Listing your registrar, DNS host and email provider in the brief lets the designer plan the switch safely.