Before commissioning a website: seven decisions for a useful project brief

1. Define the job of the website

Choose one priority: qualified enquiries, product discovery, appointment booking or direct sales. A manufacturer may need visitors to find a technical document and contact sales. A retailer may prioritise checkout. Evaluate success against that task rather than simply celebrating more visits.

2. Describe the visitor’s decision

Your audience should be more specific than “everyone”. Who arrives, what question do they need answered, and how will they compare you with another company? An architect may need technical details while a business owner asks about delivery and maintenance. Your content hierarchy should reflect those differences.

3. Plan content with the page list

Home, services, work, about and contact are only a starting point. Assign a purpose, content owner, copy, visuals and next step to every page. Do not confuse product count with page count: displaying a hundred catalogue items is a different scope from running a shop with payments.

4. Specify functions and 5. languages

List booking, enquiry forms, CRM connections, payments, memberships and languages separately. Ask whether each is essential for launch. Choose languages with both your target customer and maintenance capacity in mind. Decide who will approve translations before production starts.

6. Evaluate usability alongside design

Explore references on a phone as well as a large screen. Try finding the menu, a product detail and contact information. Motion should support the brand without delaying reading or interaction. Core Web Vitals can help assess loading, responsiveness and visual stability. A single test score does not describe the quality of an entire site.

7. Include life after delivery

Who controls the domain and administration accounts? What do updates, backups, security, renewals and support include? Put design files, content, redirects and measurement accounts on the delivery checklist. Written responsibilities help everyone expect the same outcome.

A reusable brief: “Our goal is …; our visitor is …; launch requires … pages, … products and … languages. The main action is … . Content will be prepared by … . We will evaluate success through … .” Share this note with Two Way Medya to make the scope of your project easier to define together.