If you send the same five companies the message “I want a website for my business”, you’ll get five quotes that are impossible to compare. Each one imagines a different website, with different features, at a different price.

A project brief solves this. It doesn’t have to be long or technical. It just has to say clearly what you want to achieve and what the website or app has to do. The rest, the “how”, is the development team’s job.

What a brief is, and what it isn’t

A good brief describes the problem and the desired result, in your own words. You don’t have to choose the technology, the programming language or the platform. If you write “it must be built in WordPress” without a specific reason, you close the door on solutions that may fit better.

What helps most is explaining why you need something. “I want a contact form” is a requirement. “We get quote requests by phone and lose details; I want customers to describe the job themselves, with photos” is a requirement a good team can solve much better.

What to include

  1. About your company. What you do, for whom, how you work today. Two or three paragraphs are enough.
  2. The project’s goal. What problem it solves and how you’ll know it worked: more quote requests, less time wasted, online orders.
  3. The users. Who will use the website or app: customers, colleagues, partners. What each one does, and on which device.
  4. Features, by priority. Split them into three lists: must-have (without them the project is pointless), important (you want them, but they can come in a second stage) and optional (nice to have).
  5. Content. Which pages you have in mind, in how many languages, who writes the texts and who takes the photos.
  6. Links to other systems. Invoicing or inventory software, the payment processor, couriers, the CRM, anything else it has to “talk” to.
  7. Examples. Websites or apps you like, and why; just as useful: what you don’t like.
  8. Constraints. The deadline, the budget, existing branding, legal requirements (personal data, accessibility, EU funding).
  9. After launch. Who updates the content, who handles hosting and maintenance.
  10. What you expect in the quote. Price by stage, timelines, warranty, what is and isn’t included.

Share the budget

Many people don’t share their budget, fearing the supplier will “use all of it”. In practice, a range (“between 2,000 and 4,000 euros”) helps a lot: a serious company proposes what can be done well within that budget, instead of guessing.

Common mistakes

  • Too vague. “Modern, fast, SEO-optimized website” describes any website. Say what it has to do.
  • No priorities. A long wish list, all of it “must-have”, leads to big quotes and long timelines. Priorities let you start with what matters.
  • Technology imposed without a reason. Say what you want to achieve, not with which tool.
  • Forgetting what happens after launch. Who adds products, who answers messages, who does updates.
  • Copying a brief found online. It describes someone else’s project, not yours.

A short example

Company: furniture moving and assembly, with 6 crews, in Bucharest and the surrounding area. Requests currently come in by phone and WhatsApp.

Goal: customers request a quote themselves, with the details we need, so we can reply the same day. We’d like half of all requests to come through the website in the first year.

Must-have: a business website (services, areas, indicative prices, contact); a quote request form with pickup and delivery addresses, floor, list of items and photos; email and SMS notification for every new request.

Important: a calendar with the crews’ free days. Optional: paying a deposit online.

Integrations: SmartBill for invoices. Examples: we like how simple the form on website X is.

Budget: €1,500–3,000. Deadline: before moving season, 1 May.

That’s it. On a single page, any company understands what you need and can give you a quote you can compare with the others.

What we do with it

We read the brief, ask questions where things aren’t clear and propose the solution, with price and timelines by stage. If you don’t have one, that’s fine: we build it together in our first conversation. It’s actually the first step in the way we work.

Send us your brief

Cover image: Green Chameleon, Wikimedia Commons (CC0)