A website brief does not need to be long. It needs seven things: what the site has to achieve, which pages it needs, who is writing the words, three sites you like and why, the numbers from your current site, a budget range and the name of the person who signs off. Bring those to the first conversation and any competent web design agency in Melbourne can give you a quote you can compare with the next one. Leave them out and you will get three proposals that describe three different projects, none of which is yours.
We have run first meetings for new websites since 2016, for property developers, builders, restaurants, accountants and retailers across Australia. The list below is what we wish every client brought in. Nothing on it requires technical knowledge.
The seven things to bring
1. One sentence on what the site is for
Not “a modern, professional site”. Say what a visitor should do: book a table, request a quote, download a floor plan, call the office, buy a product. A builder’s site exists to get a qualified enquiry with a suburb and a budget attached. A restaurant’s site exists to get a booking and to be found when someone searches for the cuisine and the suburb. Everything else on the site is there to make that one action more likely.
If you have two audiences, say so. A property developer’s site talks to buyers and to the agents who sell for them, and those two groups want different pages. A professional services firm often needs one message for clients and another for the people it is trying to hire.
2. The page list
Write every page you think you need, one line each. Then mark which ones already have content you are happy with. A typical small business site is eight to fifteen pages: home, about, each service, projects or menu, contact, privacy, terms. A developer site has a page per typology or stage. An online shop has a page per product plus the checkout.
The page list is what turns a vague “how much does a website cost” into a quote, because the number of pages and how many of them need new photography and copy is most of the labour. It also surfaces the question most people skip: who is writing the words.
3. Who writes the words, and who supplies the pictures
This is the item that decides whether a site launches in eight weeks or eight months. If the agency is writing, say so and expect it in the quote. If you are writing, be honest about how long that will take alongside running the business. Half-finished copy is the most common reason a site sits unlaunched.
The same goes for images. Stock photography is fine for some sections and wrong for others. A builder with no photos of finished homes has nothing to show; a restaurant with phone photos of plates will lose to the one that booked a photographer. If you will need photography or drone work, put it in the brief so it is quoted with the site, not discovered at week six.
4. Three sites you like, and what you like about each
Competitors are useful here, and so are sites from other industries. The point is not to copy. It is to give the designer a shorthand for taste: “I like how this one shows the projects large”, “I like that this one gets to the phone number fast”. Add one site you dislike and why. Designers learn more from a clear dislike than from a vague like.
5. The numbers from your current site
If you already have a site, export the last twelve months from Google Analytics and Search Console, or give the agency read access. Monthly visitors, the top ten pages, the search terms that already bring people in, and how many enquiries the site produced. This data tells the agency which pages must survive the redesign and which keywords the new site cannot afford to lose. Redesigns that ignore it routinely lose search traffic for months, and Google’s own guidance on site changes is clear that URL changes need redirects planned before launch, not after.
If you have no site, say that too. The agency will set up measurement from day one instead of trying to reconstruct it later.
6. A budget range and a launch date that is real
A range is enough. It lets the agency tell you what is realistic within it and what to push to a second phase. Hiding the budget does not get you a better price; it gets you a proposal that guesses, and the guess is usually wrong in one direction or the other.
Tie the launch date to something real: a project launch, an opening, a trade show, the end of a hosting contract. A date with a reason gets planned around. A date with no reason slides.
7. The person who signs off
Name one person. Design by committee is the second most common reason sites run late, after missing copy. Everyone can give feedback; one person decides. If that person is you, block the review time in your calendar now, because each round of feedback the agency waits on is a week added to the schedule.
What to ask the agency before you sign
- Who owns the site? The domain should be registered in your business name, with your ABN, and the site should be yours to move. auDA’s rules for .au names require an Australian presence, so check the registrant is your entity, not the agency’s.
- What is in the ongoing cost? Hosting, software licences, security updates and backups are separate from design. Ask what happens if you stop paying for maintenance after a year.
- Is search built in or sold separately? Page titles, descriptions, headings, image sizes, redirects from the old site and a sitemap submitted at launch are part of building a site properly. Ask to see them listed in the scope. Ongoing search and AI search work is a separate decision, but the foundations should not be an extra.
- Can I see five live sites, not mockups? Then open them on your phone.
- Who does the work? The person in the pitch meeting and the person building the site are often different people. That is fine if you know it.
- How many revision rounds are included, and what counts as a change?
One more check, and it is on your side of the table. Everything the site claims about your business has to be true. The ACCC treats website claims the same as any other advertising under the rules on false or misleading claims, so “award-winning”, “Australia’s leading” and “number one” need evidence behind them or they come out.
What this looks like for a bilingual business
If you serve Chinese-speaking customers, decide at brief stage whether the site needs a Chinese layer, because it changes the structure, the metadata and the copy plan. We wrote up how to set up an English and Chinese website so Google serves each language to the right person; read it before the brief so you can ask the agency the right questions.
How long should a website brief be?
One to two pages. The seven items above fit on one. The page list can be an attachment. Anything longer usually means the business has not decided what the site is for, and that decision is better made in a conversation than in a document.
Do I need to know what platform I want?
No. Tell the agency what the site has to do and who will update it, and let them recommend. Most small business and property sites in Australia run on WordPress because it is easy to hand over and easy to extend; an online shop or a members area changes the answer. Be suspicious of any agency that only ever recommends one tool regardless of the brief.
Should I get three quotes?
Two or three is sensible, as long as every agency gets the same brief. Compare what is in scope, who owns what, and the ongoing costs, not just the headline figure. The lowest quote is often the one with the most missing.
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