How to brief a web designer (with a template)
A good website brief fits on one or two pages. Say what your company does, who the site is for and the one thing it should get visitors to do. List the pages and content you have, a few sites you like and why, your budget range, your deadline and who decides. Describe the problem, not the design. The template below covers it.
Why does a brief matter?
Because it decides what you get quoted for. "A new website" can mean a template with your logo, or a custom site with a CMS, two languages and redirects from your old one. Without a brief, every studio guesses. Every guess comes back at a different price.
The spread is real. In Czechia, freelancers and low-cost agencies usually quote up to 30 000 Kč, mid-sized agencies anywhere from 30 000 to 400 000 Kč, and high-end projects start at 400 000 Kč (webfusion.cz, January 2026). In Slovakia, a company site of 5 to 15 pages with a CMS costs €600 to €1,800 from a freelancer and €1,200 to €3,000 from a Slovak agency (spacesolutions.sk, October 2026). Some of that gap is quality. A lot of it is that nobody quoted the same job.
A brief fixes that. Send the same one to every studio you talk to, and the quotes become comparable. It also makes the first call useful. Instead of spending 30 minutes on what you do, you spend them on what you need.
What goes into a good brief?
Ten questions. Copy them into an email or a doc and answer each in a few lines. Rough answers are fine. "Not sure yet" is an answer too.
- Your company in two sentences. What you do and for whom, the way you'd explain it to a friend. Add your current website address.
- Why now. What changed: a new product, a new market, a rebrand, or a site your sales team is embarrassed to send. This tells us what the project is really for.
- Who the site is for. Your best customers. Who they are, what they ask before they buy, which language they read in.
- The one job. What a visitor should do: book a call, ask for a quote, sign up, buy a ticket. Pick one main action. A page that asks for everything gets nothing.
- Pages and content. A rough list of pages. What you already have: texts, photos, case studies, client logos, video. Who writes what's missing.
- Sites you like. Three to five links, each with one line on what you like about it. Add one competitor you want to beat.
- Your brand. Logo, colours, fonts and guidelines, if you have them. Or say the brand needs work too.
- Platform and connections. Where the site lives now, who will edit it, what it has to connect to (CRM, booking, newsletter) and how many languages it needs.
- Budget. A range you're comfortable with.
- Deadline and decisions. The date, the reason behind it (an event, a launch, a season) and the one person who approves the work.
That's it. One or two pages. If you've written ten, the important parts are probably buried.
What should you leave out?
Design instructions. "Blue header, big photo, three columns." You're hiring someone to make those calls. Tell them the problem, like "people don't understand what we sell until the third page", and judge the answer they bring back.
A wish list without priorities. Forty features read as forty equal demands. Split the list into "must have at launch" and "nice to have later". Most of the second list can wait.
The full company history. Two sentences on what you do beat two pages on how you started. If the story matters for the site, it will come up on the call.
"Like Apple, but for us." A reference without a reason doesn't help. Say what you like about it: the calm, the big product photos, the short sentences.
Every opinion in the building. Collect input from sales, support and the founders before you write. Then send one brief in one voice.
Should you tell the designer your budget?
Yes. It's the most useful line in the brief, and the one most people leave out.
The same brief can be done well at very different prices. The difference is how much is designed from scratch, how many page templates there are, how much motion, and whether the brand gets work too. With a range, a studio can tell you what fits and what to drop. Without one, you get a guess.
Here's what each of our packages covers, so you can see what a range buys:
- Launch, from €3,900. Up to 5 pages, our tested sections tailored to your brand, ready in 2 to 3 weeks.
- Studio, from €9,900. Up to 10 pages, fully custom, 4 to 6 weeks.
- Flagship, from €19,900. Up to 20 pages, art-directed with a design system, 8 to 12 weeks.
Not sure what your number is? Our website cost calculator gives you a range in about a minute, with no email needed. Put that range in your brief, and we'll know where to start.
What should you have ready before the project starts?
You don't need everything on day one. You do need three things early.
- Your content, or what you have of it. Texts, photos, logos, case studies. Having your words and photos ready keeps a project on schedule. If nobody on your team has time to write, say so in the brief. We edit and shape your words, and we can bring in a copywriter.
- Access. Logins for your current site, domain, analytics and Search Console, so nothing waits on a password.
- One person who decides. Someone who can say yes. Of the three, this one matters most.
What happens after you send it?
Here's our side, so you know what to expect.
- We reply within one working day.
- A free 30-minute call. What you're trying to ship, by when, and what a win looks like. Before it, AI helps us read your current site and your competitors. On the call, we listen, ask the awkward questions and tell you honestly whether we're right for it.
- A fixed quote within about 3 working days. Scope, deliverables, timeline and one price, not a vague range. AI turns the call notes into a structured brief. We decide the approach and the price.
- A start, usually within two weeks of signing. Half the price on signing, half on launch.
- The homepage in the first week. Designed for real, in your brand. Then the rest of the pages and the build on a staging link, with two revision rounds per phase.
A good brief makes the call and the quote faster. It doesn't replace them.
What we'd do
Don't polish it. Answer the ten questions in rough sentences, add a budget range and send it to two or three studios. Then compare what comes back: who asked good questions, who quoted the same scope, who told you what to cut.
If you want us on that list, send it to peter@faroverdigital.com, or book a call and we'll fill in the gaps together. Not sure about the budget yet? Start with the calculator. How the rest goes is on how we work.