A website brief template for local businesses

A florist agrees to a new website. You send her a design questionnaire you found online: forty questions, a page on "brand personality", sliders from "playful" to "serious". She fills it in on her phone between deliveries. Every answer says "modern, clean, simple". The field for opening hours is blank. So is the one asking what customers usually want to know.

Two weeks later you have a lovely design and no idea whether she does weddings, whether she delivers on Sundays, or which phone number customers should call. In a one-person AI agency the brief is also what your agent builds from, so every gap costs you twice.

A website brief for a local business doesn't need forty questions. It needs about twenty, in six groups, and it needs the facts the site has to get right. Below is a template you can copy, a filled-in example for the florist, and a way to handle the answers nobody knows yet.

What is a website brief, and what isn't it?

A website brief is a short record of what the business needs from its website and the facts the site must get right. You write it before you design or build anything.

It sits alongside two other documents, and it helps to keep them apart:

• The brief says what the business needs. It's mostly the client's answers.
• The scope says what you'll build to meet that need, and what's not included. A website scope of work template shows how to keep that to one page.
• The quote says what it costs and when it's paid.

The brief comes first because the other two are built from it. If the brief says "online orders for same-day delivery", the scope and the price are very different from a brief that says "a page with our phone number".

What questions go in a website brief?

Here's the template. Each question is short enough to ask on a call, and each answer changes something about the site.

1. The business

1. What's the business called, exactly as customers see it on the sign?
2. What do you sell? Name the three things that matter most.
3. Where do you work: one shop, several, or you travel to customers? Which areas?
4. What are your opening hours, and when do they change (holidays, seasons)?

2. The customers

5. Who are your usual customers?
6. What do they ask most often on the phone or at the counter?
7. What do they need to know before they buy or book?

3. The website's one job

8. What's the one thing a visitor should do: call, book, order, visit, or send an enquiry?
9. When they do it, who receives it, and how (email, phone, a booking system)?

4. Words and facts

10. Who will write the words: you, us, or both?
11. What photos do you have, and who took them?
12. Which facts must be exactly right? Prices, allergens, qualifications, delivery areas.
13. Is there anything you're not allowed to say, or must say?

5. The look

14. Two websites you like, and what you like about each.
15. Your logo and colours: do files exist, and where?
16. Anything you definitely don't want?

6. The practical details

17. Do you own a domain name already? In whose name, and with which company?
18. Is there a current website, and who has the logins?
19. Which tools do you already use for bookings, payments or email?
20. Is there a date the site must be live by, and why?
21. Who approves the website: you alone, or someone else too?
22. Roughly what budget do you have in mind?

The last question feels awkward, so ask it plainly and early. A range is enough. It saves you designing a shop the business can't pay for.

What does a filled-in brief look like?

Here is part of the florist's brief, written the way you'd send it back to her:

Question	Her answer
Name on the sign	Her surname, then "Flowers", written the same way on the van and the cards
Top three things	Weekly flowers for offices, wedding flowers, same-day bouquets
Area	Delivers within five miles of the shop; weddings anywhere in the county
Hours	Tuesday to Saturday, 8am to 5pm; open Mondays in the two weeks before Mother's Day and Valentine's Day
What customers ask	"Can you deliver today?" and "Do you do weddings?"
The site's one job	Phone orders for same-day bouquets; enquiry form for weddings
Who receives enquiries	The shop email, which she checks each evening
Facts that must be exact	Delivery cut-off time (12pm), delivery area, which flowers are seasonal
Domain	Owns the shop's .co.uk address, bought by her husband; the company holding it isn't known
Approves	Her, but her business partner sees it first

Two answers there changed the project. "Enquiries checked each evening" means the wedding page should say when she replies. "Business partner sees it first" means approval takes two people, and your timeline needs room for it.

The hours answer does more work than it looks. The same hours belong on the website and on the shop's Google listing, and Google's help page for Business Profiles says businesses with complete and accurate details, including hours and special hours, are more likely to show up in local results. Collecting them once in the brief means both can match from launch day.

How do you get answers from a busy owner?

Ask the questions yourself, out loud. Don't send the template as a form and wait.

A short call works best. Share your screen or keep the template open in front of you, ask each question, and type the answers as she speaks. People answer a spoken question in their own words, and their own words are what customers search for. Website kickoff meeting questions covers how to run that call in half an hour.

Then send the filled-in brief back the same day and ask her to correct anything. That one email turns your notes into something you've both agreed.

What do you do with the answers nobody knows?

Every brief has gaps. The florist doesn't know which company holds her domain. She isn't sure about the Sunday delivery price. Her business partner hasn't sent the logo.

Don't guess, and don't stop. Keep an open questions list at the bottom of the brief:

Open question	Who answers it	By when
Which company holds the domain?	Client's husband	Friday
Price of Sunday delivery	Client	Before the prices page is written
Logo files	Business partner	Next Wednesday

Each line has a name and a date. Anything still open when you build stays marked as a gap in the draft, not filled with something plausible. A made-up delivery price on a live site is worse than a clearly marked blank on a draft.

How does the brief lead to the quote?

Once the brief is agreed, write the scope from it, then price the scope. Keep all three together for each client, so that months later you can see why the site was built the way it was.

The brief also helps when a client goes quiet after you've sent the price. A follow-up that refers to her own answers ("you mentioned the Mother's Day rush, so the site would need to be live by March") gets a reply more often than a general nudge. How to follow up after a proposal has examples of that kind of note.

Keeping the brief next to the offer and the payments, rather than in a separate folder, is the idea behind quotes, deposits and payments in one place.

How does the brief help at the end of the project?

It becomes your checklist. Before handover, go back to question 12, the facts that must be exact, and check each one on the finished site. Then go back to question 8, the site's one job, and try it on a phone, from start to finish.

The website QA checklist walks through the full check, and building, reviewing and delivering client websites shows how the finished version gets approved and handed over.

Copy the template, cut any question that doesn't fit the business, and ask the rest out loud. Twenty good answers beat forty rushed ones.