What a Good Website Brief Looks Like

en 2026-09-26 6 min read

A good website brief fits on one page: what the site must get people to do, who it is for, the pages and features you need, what content exists, your deadline and your budget. With that, a studio can place your project on one step, say a step 03 business website at EUR 1.500 to 3.500, where a vague brief only gets a range wide enough to cover every guess.

Why a vague brief gets a vague price

A handful of features decides the price, and each one can move a project up a step. "A website for my business" could be a step 01 landing page at EUR 600 to 900 or a step 04 site with logins and payments at EUR 3.500 to 7.500. Faced with that sentence, a studio can quote the widest range, add margin for what it cannot see, or ask questions. Only the last one helps you, and a brief answers those questions in advance.

Here is what some ordinary brief phrases become once they are scoped.

"Sell a few products" sounds smaller than "six service pages" and costs more, because a checkout is step 04 work and six pages with a CMS sit inside step 03.

A one-page brief template

Answer each line in your own words. Short answers are fine. Adjectives are not, because "modern" and "clean" tell nobody what to build.

1. The business. What you sell, to whom and where, in two or three sentences.
2. The one thing the site must get people to do. Call, send a form, book, buy or log in. If you pick more than one, rank them.
3. Who lands on it. Describe that person, and what they need to know before they act.
4. Pages. List them by name. "Home, three service pages, about, contact" is a perfect answer.
5. Features. Forms, booking, editing, logins, payments, and every tool the site must connect to, by name: your calendar, your CRM, your accounting software.
6. Content. What already exists (text, photos, logo, colours) and who writes or shoots the rest.
7. Sites you like. Two or three links, each with what you like about it. Add one you dislike and say why.
8. Deadline. A date and the reason for it. "As soon as possible" is not a reason.
9. Budget. A range, or the step you expect to be in from the packages page.
10. After launch. Who edits the site, whether you want care, whether search matters and who signs off on your side. Hosting is agreed per project, so say if you want to discuss the studio hosting it.

A filled-in example

The template, answered for an invented physiotherapy practice:

• The business. A small physiotherapy practice in Amsterdam Oost treating sports injuries and back pain in adults.
• Main action. Book a first appointment. Second: call with a question.
• Who lands on it. Someone in pain who wants to know whether we treat their problem, what it costs and whether their insurance covers it.
• Pages. Home, three treatment pages with prices, team, contact.
• Features. A contact form, our existing booking tool embedded on each treatment page, editable hours and prices.
• Content. Logo, colours and treatment texts exist. Photos still needed.
• Sites we like. One for how plainly it lists prices, one for its short treatment pages. We dislike sites that hide the booking button.
• Deadline. Live before the practice moves and the old address stops being correct.
• Budget. Step 03.
• After launch. The practice manager edits hours and prices. Care: yes. Local search matters. Both partners sign off.

That brief lands at step 03, EUR 1.500 to 3.500, with a build of 3 to 6 weeks. Had it said "patients pay online when they book", the checkout would move it to step 04, and the brief would have shown that at the start instead of in a revised quote.

What you can leave out

You do not need to pick the technology, draw wireframes or write a requirements document. Proposing the stack is the studio's job: we build with Next.js and explain in the scope why it fits your project. At steps 04 and 05, spend any extra length on the rules: who can log in, what each account can see, what happens when a payment fails.

From brief to fixed quote: process and timeline

1. You send the brief. Mark gaps as unknown instead of guessing.
2. Scoping call. We go through it line by line and turn each feature into something that can be built and tested.
3. Written scope and fixed quote. You get the step, the scope in plain language and a fixed price. A fixed quote always follows scoping.
4. Design and build. Step 01 takes 1 to 2 weeks, step 02 2 to 3 weeks, step 03 3 to 6 weeks and step 04 6 to 12 weeks. Step 05 is timed after discovery.
5. Launch and care. Care is EUR 100 to 300 per month for updates, monitoring, backups and small fixes. New features and redesigns are scoped on their own.

The part that waits on you is content and decisions, which is why lines 6 and 10 of the template ask who writes and who signs off.

When to spend less

If you cannot fill in line 2, you are not ready for a step 03 build. Put your offer on a step 01 landing page at EUR 600 to 900, watch what people respond to, and write the bigger brief after that.

If your features line says "contact form" and your pages line has three names on it, you need a step 02 mini-site at EUR 900 to 1.500. A step 03 quote for that brief is selling you pages you did not ask for.

And if writing the brief shows that a tool you already pay for does the job, keep it. A good brief can prove you do not need a studio yet.

Questions buyers ask

Should I put my budget in the brief?

Yes. A budget tells the studio which step to design for, and without it the studio has to guess. A range or the step you expect is enough, and an honest studio will still tell you if the brief belongs one step up or down.

What if I do not know which features I need?

Describe what your customers do today instead. "People message us to book and we write it in a diary" is a feature description in plain words. Scoping turns that sentence into features and a step.

Can the scope change after the fixed quote?

Yes. The quote is fixed to the scope that was written down, so anything added later is discussed and priced as new scope before it is built. Whatever the written scope names is inside the fixed price.

Who owns what gets built?

You do. You own the code, the repository and the database. Hosting is agreed per project, so if you have a preference, put it on the last line of the brief.

Fill in the template, send it over, and we will tell you which step it lands on. Get in touch.