Website Design Brief
[Your Company Name]
Section 1: About [company]
Business background
[What sort of business are you in? Bricks and mortar or online? Retail, service, charity, corporate
etc.]
Your Elevator Pitch
[this is critical: when you’re asked to describe your company, what do you say? From this will come
your website keywords and marketing message – make sure you include your target audience in the
sentence
Some examples: “We make custom small business websites for a fixed price” “We offer low cost
fixed price accountancy services for small business” “We make unique hand-crafted mosaics aimed
at consumers – usually female” “We supply easy to use, professional quality candle making kits to
consumers” “We provide an online theory test and hazard perception training service” “We provide
domestic plumbing services to households in the Winchester area”]
The Competition
[List your competitors and their website addresses. Are there any aspects of their sites you
particularly like, or any you particularly dislike]
Website design brief template provided FixedPriceWebsite 2011
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Current Marketing
Current Web Provision
[Do you have a website at the moment? If so, please provide the URL along with a list of those things
about the existing site you like and those you don't. Which of the existing features do you definitely
want to keep? What's wrong with your current site? What traffic levels does it get?]
Current Marketing
[Please describe all forms of marketing you use: everything from newspaper ads to direct mail and
radio spots.]
Target Audience
[Define your target audience by age, gender, disposable income, interests, jobs etc. Whatever's
needed to design a site that will attract your potential customers.]
Website design brief template provided FixedPriceWebsite 2011
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Section 2: The New Website
The purpose of the new site
[Is it to sell products/services, attract new clients, generate leads, publicise a bricks/mortar business
or event?]
The Site Format
[There are 4 main types of commercial website: brochure, shop, lead generation, membership]
A brochure website is exactly what you'd expect and is often based entirely on a printed brochure. These sites are
popular because they're cheap and quick to put together but they have almost no value when it comes to
marketing. This is because there is little relationship between a printed brochure and an effective website.
Brochure sites often commit the cardinal sin of piquing the interest of their visitors (often paid-for traffic) only to
disappoint them by providing limited further information. When creating a printed brochure, you're limited to the
number of pages and also you want to protect against the data going out of date quickly. Neither of these is true
in a web site. A brochure site is a wasted opportunity.
Shop websites, again, are pretty obvious. The best example is Amazon. Ecommerce has been long established and
we have plenty of experience of creating sites that integrate with the main payment processors including Paypal
and Nochex.
A lead generation website is what a brochure site should be. The aim of a lead generation site should be to get
into a business relationship with potential customers. What this means is that, usually by giving something away,
you get permission to contact these customers with special offers and further information. This works just as well
for bricks and mortar businesses as it does for online businesses. For example, a coffee shop could offer a discount
voucher to anyone typing in their email address. This means that, over time, you can continue to provide value to
your customers and keep them coming back for more. Borders the book shop does this. This site is a lead
generation site. For any client coming to us for a brochure site, we almost always recommend enhancing it so that
it becomes a lead generation site. The additional cost is small, the benefit huge.
The aim of a membership website is to get visitors to sign up to gain access to information or features that are
worth paying for. Many profitable websites are based on this model including PassYourTheory. The key to this
model is having something your potential customers value enough to pay for. Remember that most people expect
everything to be free but if you have valuable information or a facility your customers will pay for, this can be very
profitable as the running costs are very low.
Marketing
[How do you intend to market the site? Every site should be built with Search Engine Optimisation in
mind from the beginning. Are you thinking of using sponsored listings (eg Google Adwords and its
equivalents on Yahoo and MSN)? In most cases, this is a good idea even if done very cheaply just to
generate some interest. Do you use Adwords etc at the moment? What monthly budget do you have
in mind? How many visitors do you aim to attract per month? How many will buy? How much will
they spend, on average?]
Website design brief template provided FixedPriceWebsite 2011
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Feature List
[What features do you need or want for the new site? For example; ecommerce, user registration,
online test, newsletter, blog... Do you want a Content Management System that will allow you to
edit the site yourselves?]
Design Preferences
[The easiest way to go about this is to list 5 sites that you like the design of (or elements of the
design) and explain what it is that you like. These sites do not need to be from your industry
although it's certainly worthwhile looking at sites aimed at your target audience.]
Additional Services Required
[Which additional services (apart from design and development) are you interested in outsourcing?
Do you want a quote for providing Adwords services, Copywriting*, Flash animations, information
architecture etc.]
Website design brief template provided FixedPriceWebsite 2011
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