A website brief is a short document that tells a designer or agency what your business does, who it serves, what the site must achieve and what you will supply. For a Mississauga service business, two pages is enough. Its main job is to make sure every provider quotes the same project, so you can compare the answers fairly.
Without a brief, one provider prices a six-page template, another prices twenty custom pages with copywriting, and a third prices a rebuild with migration. The quotes look wildly different because they describe different jobs.
The ten facts every brief needs
Answer each of these in a sentence or two. If you can't, that is useful to know before you start.
- What you do. The services you sell, in the words customers use. List the three that make the most money.
- Who buys. Homeowners, landlords, condo managers, businesses, or a mix. Say which matters most.
- Where you work. Your territory, by the names people use: for example, south Mississauga from Port Credit to Clarkson, plus Oakville.
- Average job value. A rough figure is fine. It tells a provider how much each extra call is worth to you.
- How work arrives today. Referrals, search, ads, repeat customers, trucks and signs. Estimate the share of each.
- What the site must do. Usually: make it easy to call, text or email, and make you look trustworthy. Be specific if there is more.
- What is wrong now. Slow, outdated, hard to edit, wrong services, no mobile layout, no photos, or no site at all.
- What you will supply. Photos, logo files, licence and insurance details, warranty terms, and who will approve pages.
- Budget and timing. A range and a target date, with the reason for the date if there is one.
- Who owns what. State that the domain, hosting and files must be in your company's name.
Describing pages without designing them
Owners often try to describe the design: colours, layouts, a site they like. That is fine as a reference, but it is more useful to describe content and let providers propose structure.
A simple page outline
Write a line for each topic you expect the site to cover:
- Home: what we do, where, why us, how to reach us
- One page each for the three main services
- About: company history, licences, crew
- Areas: the parts of the city we serve and nearby towns
- Contact: phone, text, email, hours
Then ask each provider to propose their page list. Comparing how three providers turn the same outline into a structure tells you a lot about how they think.
Pages to be careful with
If a provider proposes dozens of near-identical neighbourhood pages, ask what will be different on each one. Pages that only swap a place name are doorway content and can hurt a site rather than help it.
A fill-in template
Copy this into a document and replace the brackets:
Company: [Business name], [trade], based in [City or area]. Main services: [Service 1], [Service 2], [Service 3]. Customers: mostly [homeowners / landlords / property managers / businesses]. Territory: [Areas served], plus [nearby towns]. Average job value: about $[amount]. Where work comes from today: [rough percentages]. Goal for the site: [for example, more calls for Service 1 in Area A]. Current problems: [list]. We will supply: [photos, logo files, licence details]. Approver: [Name, role]. Budget: $[low]–$[high]. Target launch: [date], because [reason]. Ownership: domain, hosting and all files registered to [Business name].
Comparing quotes line by line
When quotes arrive, put them in a table with the same rows. Gaps in a quote are often more revealing than its price.
| Item | Provider A | Provider B | Provider C |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of pages | |||
| Who writes the copy | |||
| Photography included | |||
| Migration and redirects | |||
| Accessibility standard | |||
| Timeline | |||
| Hosting and care after launch | |||
| Domain and files in your name | |||
| How results are measured | |||
| Cancellation terms |
A worked example
Say Provider A quotes a low figure for six pages but leaves copy to you. Provider B quotes about double for ten pages including copy and redirects. If writing six good pages would take you 20 hours, and your time is worth $90 an hour, that is $1,800 of your own work hidden inside the cheaper quote, before you account for redirects that protect your existing traffic. The cheaper quote may still be right for you, but you can now see why.
Warning signs in a quote
- No page list. You can't tell what you are buying.
- "Unlimited revisions." Usually means no clear process for approvals.
- Domain or hosting in the provider's name. Insist on your own accounts.
- Promises of rankings or a number of leads. Nobody can honestly promise those.
- No mention of measurement. If they won't count calls and texts, they can't show the site works.
- Long lock-in for care or hosting. Ask what happens, and what you keep, if you leave.
Questions a good provider should ask you
If a provider sends a quote without asking any of these, be cautious:
- Which jobs do you want more of, and which do you want fewer of?
- What do customers ask on the phone before they book?
- Who will approve pages, and how quickly?
- What does your current site do well that we should keep?
- How will we know, six months from now, whether this worked?
After you choose a provider
Keep the brief. It becomes the yardstick for the project: when a design is presented, check it against the goal you wrote down, and when a page is drafted, check it against the questions customers ask. Six months after launch, read it again and compare the result with what you set out to achieve.
Where to go from here
If you want help, our website design service starts from exactly this brief, and rebuilds add the migration inventory described above. Costs are explained on the pricing page. You can also send your finished brief by email and ask us to review it before the free consultation; see contact for what happens next. We are a design and marketing service, not a contractor.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a website brief be?
Two pages is enough for most service businesses. Long briefs tend to describe designs rather than goals, which limits what a good designer can suggest.
Should I include a budget?
Yes, even as a range. Without one, providers either quote high to be safe or low to win, and neither helps you compare.
How many providers should I send it to?
Three is usually enough. More than five creates a lot of comparison work without much extra information.
What if I don't know which pages I need?
Describe the services you sell and the questions customers ask. A good provider should propose the page list from that, and you can compare how each one does it.