You’ve decided your website needs work. Maybe the design feels dated. Maybe updating a page means messaging a developer. Or perhaps the business has changed, but the website is still telling the old story.
Then an agency asks you for a brief.
You don’t need to arrive with a sitemap, a chosen platform and every paragraph written. A useful starting point is much simpler: explain what isn’t working and what you need to be different.
Here are five things worth bringing to that first conversation.
1. The problem behind “we need a new website”
“Make it look more modern” describes a preference. It doesn’t explain the whole problem.
Try finishing this sentence:
“Our current website makes it difficult to…”
Perhaps customers struggle to understand your services. Your team cannot update products easily. The website attracts enquiries for work you no longer offer.
For our own NoLoopTech rebuild, we still liked parts of the old design. The bigger difficulties were managing updates and understanding whether the website was helping people discover us.
That context gave the redesign a purpose beyond changing its appearance.
2. The questions customers keep asking
Think about your last few enquiries. What did people need you to explain?
They might ask whether you serve their location, what happens after an enquiry, or how two similar products differ. Those conversations can reveal information the website needs to make clearer.
Bring a few examples, with personal details removed. They give the team something concrete to work with when planning pages, navigation and content.
3. What deserves to stay
A redesign doesn’t mean starting every part of the business story again.
You may already have useful service descriptions, strong photography, recognisable branding or project examples customers respond to. Some pages may also attract search traffic worth understanding before their URLs change.
Make a short list of what you value about the current site. If you have access to analytics or Search Console, share that too. Existing evidence helps the team distinguish what needs replacing from what needs care.
4. What your team needs to manage
Picture an ordinary week after launch.
Who adds a product? Who changes a service description? Where does a contact enquiry go? Does someone need to publish content in another language?
These details affect the platform and editing setup. A beautiful website can still be frustrating if everyday changes depend on help your team didn’t expect to need.
You don’t have to choose the technology yourself. Explain the work your people need to do, and ask to see how the proposed setup would handle it.
5. The connections and constraints
List anything the website must work with: payments, delivery, bookings, customer records or another application.
Also mention deadlines, the budget range you’re comfortable discussing, and who will approve the work. If a launch depends on photography, product information or another supplier, say so early.
You can gather account access later through an appropriate handover process. For the first conversation, knowing which systems exist is enough.
A useful brief can fit on one page
Start with these five lines:
- We want to change the website because…
- Our main customers need to…
- We want to keep…
- Our team needs to manage…
- The website must connect with…
That gives a design and development team a meaningful place to begin. The structure, scope and technical decisions can then be worked through together.
Planning a redesign? Tell us what feels difficult about your current website. We can start there.