Creating a new website is exciting, if not overwhelming. A well-structured and thorough website content brief can turn what's often a stressful and lengthy process into a streamlined and efficient experience for marketing teams, web developers, UX and UI experts, designers and project managers. Whether it’s a website to educate internal teams or engage an external audience, it all starts with the brief.
What is a website brief and why is it important?
A website brief is a strategic document that outlines the key information everyone involved in a website build or relaunch needs to know. An effective brief aligns everyone involved on the website, from content creation to UX design, to the same goals, objectives and timeline. It streamlines communication and enables individuals and teams to work effectively in parallel, meaning you're more likely to deliver on time and meet the brief.
It doesn't need to be fancy or built using complicated software. In fact, the simpler, the better. A simple Word document or PDF (that can't be edited by others) is all you need.
Creating a brief that encompasses each party involved can take a lot of time, so build this into the schedule. As tempting as it may be, wait until the full website brief is ready to go and signed off by relevant stakeholders before sharing more widely and beginning work on the website.
The importance of a well-structured website brief
A website brief should be treated a bit like a story. So many individuals and departments are involved in a web build, which means clarity and chronology is especially important. Start with the overall goal and objectives - these should be easy to access throughout the project at all times (people can get carried away and will need to be reminded of the overall goal more than you think!).
Done right, a brief has a direct impact on project outcomes. It streamlines stakeholder communication, ensures everyone is working towards that same goal (at the same time) and avoids anyone going off on a tangent. This makes it far less likely that you'll turn up to a meeting and be presented with something you're not expecting.
Key components of a website brief
We've covered what a brief is, why it's important and how it should be structured, but what about the actual content?
Objective
What is the goal of the website? Why are you launching or relaunching this website? This might include stats on existing web traffic and KPIs for the new site.
Target audience
Which type of user or users are you targeting? Does your target audience align with your business's existing audience personas, or have you created new ones for this project?
Website map
Every single page of a website, even the privacy policy page, needs to be thought about, so include a list of every website page and the page navigation/hierarchy.
Design requirements
The creative brief or web design brief is arguably the most complex element of this process.
This needs to incorporate the wireframes, which in an ideal world would be done collaboratively between your UX, UI and creative teams - and the SEO team or agency (if you're targeting particular keywords or creating content clusters, these will need their pages - more on this below).
The design requirements should also include visual guidelines (aligned with the business's brand guidelines), such as imagery style, if there's a particular element of the brand that should or shouldn't be used and any animation requirements.
Work with the design team to create the design brief. They'll have brilliant ideas and will be able to identify any of your ideas that take it up a gear or slow down the process by months. Designers think creatively, so make sure they're part of this process.
Content brief
Every page of a website needs content, but different pages will likely require different styles. A service page, for example, might be to-the-point, whereas an ‘about us’ page might be more friendly. Include any tone of voice requirements and make sure any content writers are aware of editorial brand guidelines when it comes to content creation.
Make sure the website content aligns with your business's or marketing team's wider content strategy. Ideally, this should incorporate SEO or some form of SEO content brief, as this will dictate a large portion of the website's content.
SEO content
These days, SEO considerations are a must (although this is constantly changing with summarising search AI tools). Many businesses will use an SEO agency, but if you're lucky, you might already have this expertise in-house.
You should be clear on the keywords you're looking to target (this requires lengthy keyword research) and any content clusters you need. These will shape both the wider content brief and dictate the pages of the website. Be sure to involve a content writer, though. SEO doesn't rule all - good content remains key, and your audience will remember you for it.
You'll need to prepare the meta title and meta description for each web page and have a strategy for internal links, as well as do a technical audit of the website to pick up things like broken links and missing meta information.
Timeline
The project manager will need their own incredibly detailed timeline (which everyone should have access to), but the website brief should include a top-level timeline at the very least, so everyone knows when each stage should be complete. This is what enables teams to work in tandem, which is required for an efficient website build. If the timeline needs to change at any update, send an updated brief, so everyone is working from the same brief and the same schedule.
Budget
It might be that the project manager is the only person in control of the budget, but it could be that the content editor needs to use freelancers (a lot of copy is needed for a website, and web copy is a different way of writing) or the design team needs an expert animator. The budget for the whole project and individual departments needs to be set out.
Check-in schedule
Build into the schedule should be full project check-ins. These might be monthly, fortnightly or even weekly, although the project manager should have their regular check-ins with the various departments.
Departments and team members
Not only should the departments involved on the website be listed in the brief (and the individual team members, if appropriate), but it should be clearly stated what each department is responsible for, and the person who heads up that department. This brings accountability.
The value of context: elevating your website brief
A website brief should be clear and concise - start rambling and going off-topic, and teams and individuals will do the same. However, there's huge value in adding context that provides the bigger picture. This means explaining to the team why you're building or relaunching a website and the value it's adding to the business, and in turn, the value the website build team is adding.
You should have done some research on other websites that have inspired this build - show these to the team, so everyone gets a visual picture of what you're trying to achieve. You might have even worked with your creative team to do a few mock-ups, with your company branding and a few ideas for the homepage - share these with the team. The more tangible an idea becomes, the more excited the people involved become.
If this context can be shared in person, it will have the biggest impact, but these days that's not always possible.
The hard bit: staying on track
Creating a strong and effective website brief takes time, but that's often the easy bit. At a very top level, the goal of a website brief is to align team members and streamline efficiencies. However, creating the brief in itself doesn't do this - a project manager ensuring everyone sticks to the brief and schedule will.
Ensure that you've chosen an excellent project manager (which might be yourself!) and that they have tools in place to allow them to effectively manage the project. Even better, ensure those tools enable and streamline communication between all those involved, or at least the team leaders involved. This could be, and ideally would be, project management software, but if that's not part of your budget, this could be a simple spreadsheet with regular check-ins.
Creating high-quality content after the launch
One element of a website that often gets forgotten about after a launch is the good old blog post, which often becomes an afterthought despite being included in almost every business's content strategy. To avoid this, your head of content marketing or content manager should set a target number of new blogs, such as one a month, and stick to it.
To ensure the written content remains high-quality and aligned with both your content and SEO strategies, create a content brief template that includes sections for keywords that should be targeted and any internal links required. Your SEO expert or agency may even be able to support by creating detailed content briefs, outlining exactly what should be included in the blog post. If you stick to this and remain consistent, before long, the creation of quality, informative and interesting blogs will seamlessly become part of your content creation process.
With the right team in place, a good brief means a good website build. So take your time, ask for input from your wider team, and you'll be set.
Start building your new website with Blueprint Partners
Blueprint Partners builds award-winning websites for our clients - our relaunch of the Costa Foundation website won Best Use of Digital at the 2025 Corporate Content Awards. Get in touch today to find out how we can support you with a new website or relaunch.
