The website brief is a short document that helps to convey to your designer what your business does, who your target audience is, and what you want your website to accomplish so you can get comparable prices and avoid mid-stage surprises. For businesses in NYC, that means to check for your neighbourhoods you offer your services to, what first step customers should take, and what content you currently have. You will get a section-by-section template and a completed example below.
Use the Following Website Brief Template
Website Project Brief
Business name: CourtYard
Current website: https://www.courtyard-uae.com/
Business location: UAE
Main contact: theyard@eim.ae
- Project Summary: What does the business offer? Why is the site being created or redesigned?
- Main Objective: What should the website offer?
- Target Audience: Who is the main audience, and what are they looking for?
- Main Customer Actions: What next actions should the customers take?
- Call
- Request a quote
- Book
- Buy
- Visit
- Contact
- Other
- Required Pages: List the pages and important subpages.
- Required functionality: required features separated from future ones.
- Content: What videos, copy, images, logo, and other elements are available?
- Brand direction: brand-specific colours, logos, fonts, and references.
- Technical requirements: CMS/platform preferences, hosting, domain, integrations, forms, analytics, email, ecommerce, or other systems.
- SEO requirements: Existing SEO considerations, local search needs, redirects, metadata, analytics, and measurement.
- Accessibility: Identify any accessibility requirements, standards, testing, or organizational expectations.
- Budget: State the range of price you can pay according to the work scope.
- Timeline: Desired start and launch date, and any deadlines that need to be met.
- Responsibilities: Who provides content, approves designs, manages hosting, and handles ongoing maintenance?
- Success criteria: How will you analyse that the project has achieved its goals?
- Open questions: List anything you have not decided yet.
This project brief can help you share your requirements with the designer and avoid assumptions and unresolved decisions. It makes the initial discussion effective and provides smoothness during the development process.
A Real Project Example
Saad Web Designer’s published Courtyard case study provides a useful example of why detailed requirements matter. Saad Web Designer’s published Courtyard case study provides a useful example of why detailed requirements matter. The project needed a creative display of visually impressive artwork, showcasing exhibitions, studios, and community events. A website was required that could maintain an artistic presentation without losing loading speed, usability, or mobile responsiveness. Saad provided the solution through lightweight animations and images, an organised structure, and responsive design.
For a brief, this type of requirement could be expressed as:
Business requirement: Contemporary, easy-to-use, and visually attractive website that presents a unique identity in a creative industry.
Website requirement: Highlight exhibitions, creative studios, and community events clearly and attractively.
Technical consideration: Don’t compromise on loading speed and usability. This is because the project needed high-resolution images, visually rich layouts, and smooth animations while maintaining quality and performance on all types of devices.
Service area: UAE
Main objective: Attract artists, visitors, and creative professionals.
Primary action: inquiry submissions and portfolio views from the target audience.
Pages: About, Projects, Clients, Contact.
Must-haves: forms, mobile-first layout, user-friendly structure, premium appeal, analytics with form-submission tracking.
(https://www.saadwebdesigner.com/project/courtyard)
That is more useful than simply writing “make the website modern and attractive
Start with Your Business Goals
Your business requirements should come first before designing starts. The first section of your website must answer the following questions:
- What does your business do?
- Where does it operate?
- Who are your main customers?
- What products or services are most important?
- Why are you building or redesigning the website now?
- What should the website help the business accomplish?
For example:
Business: NYC residential cleaning company
Service area: Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens
Primary goal: Generate qualified cleaning-service enquiries
Main customer action: Request a quote
Secondary actions: Call, email, and view service areas
It is a more useful approach to explain to the designer effectively what the purpose of your website is instead of telling them you need a “modern website”. Through the business goal, they can decide how to craft navigation, content structure, CTAs, etc.
Define success practically
If you are developing a new website, identify the outcomes that matter to your business. The examples can be:
- More quote requests
- More phone calls
- More appointment bookings
- More store visits
- More enquiries from a specific service area
- Better presentation of professional services
- Easier access to menus, services, locations, or opening hours
Tell your designer what the website doesn’t need at the moment. If you don’t need online payments, customer accounts, or e-commerce, let them know.
List the Pages You Actually Need
One of the major parts of a website requirements checklist is the page structure. Start building the pages that represent your brand effectively and support the user journey. A tentative structure of a small business website can be:
- Home
- About
- Services
- Individual service pages
- Portfolio or Projects
- Testimonials or Reviews
- FAQ
- Contact
- Locations or Service Areas
- Privacy Policy
- Terms or other required legal pages
Don’t add irrelevant pages just to resemble your competitors. Each page should have a practical purpose behind it.
For example, a site structure for an NYC landscaping company can be:
Home
Services:
Lawn Care
Garden Maintenance
Seasonal Cleanup
Service Areas
Manhattan
Brooklyn
Queens
About
Projects
Contact
If you already have a good website, use the current URL and go through the pages that need to be kept, written again, combined, redirected, or removed. This information is very important because redesigning a website without saving the URL and existing content can increase the workload.
Provide Information for Features and Functionality
Providing the right and useful information can make a typical website into a professional and compelling one. Instead of telling the designer “I want an extraordinary website”, provide them with a list of essential features that you need currently. The important requirements may include:
- Contact forms
- Quote-request forms
- Appointment booking
- Online payments
- Ecommerce
- Product filtering
- Customer accounts
- Newsletter signup
- Blog
- Site search
- Image galleries
- Maps
- Social media feeds
- Reviews
- Live chat
- CRM integration
- Email marketing integration
- Analytics
- Third-party booking systems
Focus on must-haves rather than nice-to-haves.
For example:
Must-haves:
Quote request form
Mobile-friendly design
Service pages
Google Analytics or equivalent measurement setup
Nice to have:
Online appointment booking
Future:
Customer login area
This information can help the designer to consider the essential things first and focus on the other elements later.
Share the Content You Currently Have
While preparing a small business website brief, businesses often forget to share the content. Share with your designer what you currently have and what needs to be added.
Text
Specify whether you have:
Existing website copy
Service descriptions
About-page content
Product descriptions
Blog articles
FAQs
Legal copy
If you want the copy to be written again or transformed, state that clearly.
Images
List the images and graphics you have already decided, that can include:
Logo
Brand photography
Product photography
Team photographs
Project images
Headshots
Illustrations
Icons
Existing graphics
Evaluate your brief and check if you need more images to be photographed or graphics to be added.
Don’t provide content later, as it might affect the final design. A page layout based on 50-word placeholder copy may need substantial adjustment when the final 500-word copy arrives.
Provide Your Brand and Design Direction
You don’t have to design your website on your own. You can provide specific details that you want to have in a credible brief that the designer can understand. Include information that defines your brand, such as:
- Logo files
- Brand colors
- Existing fonts
- Brand guidelines
- Photography style
- Preferred visual tone
- Examples of websites you like
If you provide references from some websites, you need to explain what you like about the design and why. For example, you can talk about the navigation and the reason behind it is that services or products can be found easily. Explaining to the designer what you like can give them a clear idea of what you want instead of bombarding several examples from websites.
Do not dictate to the designer what should be done and how it should be done. Just inform them what you need and what problems you are facing, and let them handle the rest.
Mention specific requirements of NYC
NYC businesses have requirements that are particularly specific to the area, audience, service area, or industry. Tell the designer:
⦁ Which NYC audience you serve
⦁ Whether you also provide services outside NYC
⦁ Whether customers need directions or location information
⦁ Whether neighbourhood-specific pages are required
⦁ Whether your business has a physical storefront
⦁ Whether multilingual content is needed
⦁ Whether accessibility requirements need specific attention
⦁ Whether the website needs integrations with local or industry-specific systems
Focus on accessibility right from the beginning rather than considering it an afterthought. By following NYC’s small business guidelines, you can make your website accessible and align your business with current accessibility values. The W3C’s WCAG 2.2 is a widely used international standard. It includes keyboard operation, understandable content, text alternatives, and compatibility with assistive technologies. You don’t need a legal conclusion in your brief. Ask the designer which standard they use to build and how they check.
Add SEO and Measurement Requirements
Before finalising the site structure, a web designer in NYC adds SEO if organic search is the priority. Your brief should state your SEO needs that involve:
Page titles, meta descriptions, and heading structure
Image alt text
Local SEO setup
XML sitemap
Redirects from old URLs
Google Search Console and analytics setup
Conversion tracking (form submissions, calls)
If you already have a website, give your designer access to the current content. Current pages may have search visibility, backlinks, or useful content that can be used in a redesign too.
State Your Budget and Timeline
No need to provide the exact budget. You can tell them your range. For example, Budget: $5,000–$8,000, depending on scope and functionality. Ask them what they will include in this budget, such as:
- Strategy
- UX planning
- Design
- Development
- Content migration
- Copywriting
- SEO setup
- Testing
- Hosting
- Domain-related work
- Launch
- Training
- Post-launch support
For the timeline, provide the desired date or deadline to be met. State your reasons why you need a website by then, such as an upcoming opening, campaign, event, seasonal period, or office move.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Be honest in sharing your thoughts and requirements. The brief doesn’t have to be perfect. But make sure not to use the following:
Saying the designer to make it modern: the description of “modern” can be different from one designer to another. State what you actually need and expect.
Listing features without mentioning important ones: separate must-haves from the nice-to-haves. The designer must know what matters most and should be added.
Forgetting content: proper planning and execution can not be achieved if it is not clear who is sharing the content and who is providing the photos.
Giving an inappropriate deadline without scope discussion: a simple website and a custom website are both different ones. Don’t define the timeline without knowing the complexity of the work.
Keeping the technical details vague: If you need an integration, customer login, e-commerce system, booking platform, or CRM connection, mention it before the proposal is prepared.
Using the brief as the final design decision: The purpose of the brief is to help the designer understand your business requirements, company objectives, target audience, problems, etc. If they provide you with a better option for current requirements, consider it.
The Exact Use of a Brief While Hiring a Designer
After completing your brief, send it to each designer you have selected. Compare proposals on what they include in it such as the number of pages, functionality, content responsibilities, revisions, testing, launch, ownership, and ongoing support you actually need. Cheap pricing is not always good because it might compromise on essentials. To learn more about hiring a designer, see our guide on choosing a freelance web developer.
FAQs:
What should be the length of a small business website brief?
It shouldn’t have to be lengthy. You just need to focus on business objectives, target audience, goals, pages, functionality, content, technical requirements, budget, timeline, and responsibilities.
Should my budget be included in the website brief?
You can provide an expected range for the website development so that the designer can estimate according to the scope. If you don’t want to mention your budget, then just stating your requirements in a meaningful brief is enough.
Do I have to learn about the CMS I need?
No, not necessarily. If you have preferences related to WordPress, Webflow, or Shopify, tell the designer. But if you don’t know, state your needs, and the designer will suggest the right one.
What should I do if I don’t know about my website requirements?
If you don’t know about your requirements, leave them for the discussion with the designer. A good brief leads to ideal open discussions rather than forcing everything to be known already.
Should I own my website?
Yes, you should. Register the website under your name so that you can control it, whether the designer builds or maintains it.
Conclusion
An ideal website project brief template for NYC businesses is not a technical document but needs to have clarity about your goals, target audience, content, and who owns each responsibility. Start with the template provided above and fill it out. If you are not confident about anything, leave it for the designer. It is enough for a fair comparison between proposals. When you are ready to start, share your proposal with the NYC web designer as the opening of your conversation.
