How to Write a Website Brief (With a Free Template for Small Business)

A website brief is the set of answers a designer needs to build your site. A good one gets you a website that sounds like you, attracts the customers you want and brings in enquiries. A vague one gets you a pretty template with your logo on it.

You don’t need to be a marketer to write a good brief. You just need to answer a handful of questions honestly and specifically. This guide walks through each one, with examples, and finishes with a template you can copy.

Why the brief matters more than the design

Most websites that fail don’t fail because of colours or fonts. They fail because they don’t say clearly what the business does, who it’s for and what to do next. Those are brief problems, not design problems.

A designer can make anything look good. What they can’t do is guess that 70% of your profit comes from switchboard upgrades, that you don’t want small residential jobs, or that your best customers find you through their builder. Only you know that, and the brief is where you say it.

1. The basics

Start with the facts the website must get right:

• Business name (and trading name if different)
• ABN, and any licence or registration numbers you’re required or want to show
• Phone, email and address (or service area if you don’t want your address shown)
• Opening hours, including after-hours or emergency availability
• Years in business and any memberships or accreditations

These sound boring. They’re also the details customers check to decide whether you’re legitimate.

2. What you do, in order of importance

List your services, then put them in order of what you most want to sell. Not what you do most often, but what you want more of: the most profitable, most enjoyable or most strategic work.

For each main service, add a sentence or two in your own words. For example:

Switchboard upgrades. Mostly older homes in the inner west with ceramic fuses. We do the full upgrade with safety switches in a day and handle the paperwork with the network.

That one paragraph gives a designer the page heading, the target customer, the area, the selling point and the reassurance, all at once.

3. Where you work

List the suburbs, towns or regions you cover, and mark the ones you most want work from. If you travel further for bigger jobs, say so. If there are areas you won’t go to, say that too.

Service areas matter for local search. Pages and content that clearly mention the areas you serve help you appear when people search for your service in their suburb.

4. Who your best customers are

Describe the customers you’d clone if you could. Homeowners or landlords? First home buyers or investors? Small businesses or strata managers? What do they worry about? What questions do they always ask?

Then describe the customers you don’t want, such as price shoppers, very small jobs or a particular type of work you’ve stopped doing. A good website quietly filters those out.

5. What visitors should do

Pick the main action you want people to take on your website, and a backup:

• Call you now
• Request a quote (with photos)
• Book a time online
• Check eligibility or borrowing power
• Download a guide or price list

Most service businesses need one main action, repeated on every page. Tradies usually want calls and quote requests. Brokers usually want a booked chat or a completed enquiry. Clinics want online bookings.

6. What makes you different

This is the hardest question and the most important. “Quality service at competitive prices” says nothing, because everyone says it. Try finishing these sentences instead:

• Customers usually choose us because…
• Unlike most [your trade/profession], we…
• The thing people mention most in reviews is…
• We guarantee…

Specific, true and slightly surprising answers make the best website copy.

7. Your brand

Gather what you have:

• Your logo, ideally as a PNG with a transparent background, SVG or PDF
• Brand colours, if you have them (even “the blue on our ute” is useful)
• Photos of your work, team, vehicles or premises
• Reviews and testimonials you’re happy to use

If you don’t have a logo, say so. A designer can create one, or start with a clean text-based logo that can be replaced later.

8. Websites you like (and don’t)

Find two or three websites you like the look of. They don’t have to be in your industry. Say what you like about each: the photos, the colours, how simple it is, how easy it is to get a quote. If there are sites you dislike, include those too. It’s often the quickest way to communicate taste.

9. Pages and features

Finally, list any pages or features you know you want:

• A page for each main service
• A service area or suburb pages
• About us, with a photo of you or the team
• Gallery or case studies
• FAQs
• Quote calculator, booking calendar, online payments or a client area

You don’t need a complete sitemap. A good designer will suggest one. See how many pages your website needs for a starting point.

Common brief mistakes

Being too general. “We do all types of plumbing” gives nothing to work with. List the five jobs you most want.

Writing for yourself, not your customer. Your customer doesn’t care about your mission statement. They care whether you can fix their problem, when, and for roughly how much.

Leaving out the awkward stuff. If you don’t do small jobs, if there’s a minimum call-out fee, or if you’re booked three weeks out, say so. Setting expectations on the website saves time on the phone.

Hiding what you’re proud of. Awards, big projects, long-term clients, five-star reviews. Put them in.

A website brief template

Copy this and fill it in:

The ten-minute version

If filling in a template sounds like homework, the Webralia brief asks every one of these questions in a guided form, one step at a time, on your phone or computer. Most people finish in about ten minutes. We use your answers to build and write the whole site, and you see the finished result before you pay.

Start your brief and let the questions do the work.