A brief is not a wish list. It is a map. The difference between a brief that works and one that wastes everyone's time is usually not length. It is specificity. Here is the structure we use at CP-01 and what we look for in each section.

Section one: the problem

Not the solution. The problem. Most briefs skip straight to 'we need a new website' without explaining why the current one is not working. Is it slow? Does it not rank? Does it confuse visitors? Does it not reflect the current product? The answer to that question shapes every decision that follows. If you do not know what is broken, you cannot know when it is fixed.

Section two: the audience

Who is the site for, and what do they need to do on it? Not demographics. Behaviour. A 35-year-old marketing manager is not an audience. A marketing manager who arrives from a Google search, reads two pages, and needs to send a link to their CFO before they can make a decision: that is an audience. The more specific you are about the journey, the more useful the brief becomes.

Section three: success criteria

How will you know the project worked? This section is where most briefs go vague. 'A site we are proud of' is not a success criterion. 'A site that generates 20 qualified enquiries per month within 90 days of launch' is a success criterion. It does not have to be a number. But it has to be something you can check.

Section four: constraints

Budget, timeline, technical constraints, brand constraints, stakeholder constraints. Who has final approval? Is there a board presentation the site needs to be ready for? Is there an existing CMS the site must integrate with? Constraints are not problems. They are the walls of the route. Knowing them early means we design within them rather than discovering them in week eight.

The question most briefs forget

What has been tried before, and why did it not work? This is the most useful question in any brief and the one that almost never gets answered. If you have already had a website built and it did not perform, we need to know what happened. Not to judge the previous agency, but because the answer usually contains the real problem that the brief has not named yet.

If you are not sure where to start, download our brief template. It is the same four-page document we use at CP-01 with every new client.