Most weeks we speak to a business owner who is frustrated with their website.

‍It's not getting enquiries. It doesn't look right. It doesn't feel like them. They want it fixed.

And nine times out of ten, when we dig into what happened, the problem wasn't the designer. It wasn't the developer. It was the brief — or the absence of one.

Here's what we see most often.

"We just need something clean and modern."

Clean and modern is not a brief. It's an aesthetic preference. It tells a designer nothing about who your customers are, what you want them to do when they land on your site, what makes your business different, or what problem your website is supposed to solve. Design without direction produces websites that look fine and do nothing.

"We want something like [competitor's website]."

Your competitor's website was built around their business, their customers and their goals — not yours. Copying their aesthetic might make you look similar, which is the opposite of what you need. The best thing a website can do for your business is make it immediately obvious why someone should choose you over the company next door.

"We'll sort the copy later."

Copy is not an afterthought. It's the foundation. The words on your website do more work than any design element — they answer questions, build trust, remove objections and tell someone why they should call you. When a brief doesn't include clear messaging, the design fills the gap with vague language that sounds like everyone else.

"We want to show everything we do."

The instinct to put everything on your website is understandable. You've worked hard on everything you offer. But a website that tries to serve every possible customer ends up serving none of them particularly well. The best websites are ruthlessly focused on one thing: making a specific type of person take a specific action.

So what does a good brief actually look like?

It answers four questions: — Who is this website actually for? — What do we want them to do when they get here? — What makes us different from the alternatives? — What does success look like in six months?

If you can answer those four questions clearly before you start, your chances of ending up with a website that actually works go up dramatically.

The design comes after. Always.

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