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Introduction

The first step in working with a web design company is to write a brief describing your project.

This step is essential. With a good brief you will be able to get fairly accurate estimates and quotations from a web design company.

The brief gives you a chance to clearly explain your aspirations. Up to this point you have probably had lots of exiting ideas but without a clear objective. Now is your opportunity to collect all these ideas together ready to start building your killer web site. Web design companies deal with lots of different projects . The brief helps to make sure everyone starts from the same point.

Types of Brief

A brief can be one document or can be a number of more specific documents covering various areas of a web site design.

Generally it all depends on the size of your project .

• The strategic brief outlines the strategic direction for the site. It includes a mission statement, marketing goals, competitive analysis, user requirements, branding strategy, and the metrics that you will use to measure your success.
• The technical brief describes the visitors’ equipment, including their monitor size, connection speed, computer processor speed, amount of RAM, color depth, installed plug-ins, etc.
• The functional brief delineates what the site should do for visitors, both now and in the future. Be careful to separate the functionality from the execution, keep the technical constraints of the typical user’s PC in mind, and avoid “feature creep” (enlarged project scope due to poor planning in the initial stages), if at all possible.
• The creative brief lays out the proposed visual design directions to explore, the objectives of the upcoming creative exploration, the audience, the “story” the site should tell, the tone and imagery that the site should take on.
• Finally, the content plan, although not a brief, is just as essential and delineates who is responsible for what content and when. The columns of the content plan should include: description of the deliverable, content provider, writer/editor, due date, date submitted, and priority.

We will cover the Strategic Web Design Brief here since this is the starting point.
Where the text is italicized fill in your own information:

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Strategic Web Design Brief

Overview

Write a short summary describing your project

The overview sets the scene for your project. It explains if this is a new web site, a redesign or an enhancement to an existing web site. It also explains how the web site might fit into your other business activities.

Start with objectives

Record your objectives for the finished web site.

Define what you want the web site to do. This sounds obvious, but nearly everyone overlooks this step. Objectives should be listed in descending order of importance, and kept to the point, e.g.:

• Generate sales enquiries
• Raise brand awareness
• Reduce the time / spent for each enquiry
• Provide a shop front for an existing business
• Provide educational material

Every aspect of your web site and your brief should be orientated around these objectives. Use this section to give your web designers an insight into the type of web site you need.

Audience

Provide a list of potential visitors to your web site in order of focus.

The list might look like

• Males in 18-45 age range with an interest in Electronics
• Females Artists in age range 20-65.
• Couples looking for Budget Property in Southern Spain.

The intended audience for your web site can make a huge difference to the way it looks, feels and works. It is essential to take the time to identify audiences clearly in the design brief. Resist the temptation to say 'everyone', as this will lead to a web site that satisfies nobody's requirements.

Competitors

Find and list your competitor's web sites, and how yours should position against theirs.

Your web site will always be in competition with others. Find and list these competitors - try asking an outsider to search for services similar to yours. Try search engines, press, online directories, Yellow pages and anything else relevant to your field. Record the strengths and weaknesses of others, and where possible determine how successful they are.

Follow the Leaders

Find and list the standard solutions to your objectives.

Successful web sites use generic solutions that are "commonly adopted" ways of presenting information on the internet. They are successful because they are easy to use and understand by the vast majority of their visitors. Look at the big sites such as www.bbc.co.uk, www.amazon.co.uk and www.tesco.co.uk.

It's likely that you will find similar sites already carrying out business in a similar vein to your own objectives. Compare your objectives defined earlier such as "Provide a shop front for an existing business" and see how this was implemented on the sites. This may involve facilities they offer to present the information, or the means they use to engender customer loyalty such as the use of blogs, forums, gift voucher systems or customer reviews.

Go against the grain at your own peril. A creative solution might be a good idea, but it might not work in practice. As always, keep your web site as simple to use as possible. This does not prevent you from creating your own brand identity which may be one of the key to identifying your uniqueness among other web sites. When in doubt ask for professional advise and honest responses from your web designer who sees many sites and has a good "feel" for what works and what does not.

Marketing and promotion

Specify your targets, and co-ordinate all your marketing from the beginning.

More visitors to your web site generally leads to a more successful web site. How this equates to financial returns depends on the nature of your web site. With a shopping site the key performance will be the number or value of sales generated and it's important to convert as many visitors to your site to buying customers. Work out how many purchases need to be made to start making a profit taking into account the development and running costs of your web site.

It's important to focus on marketing at a very early stage and factors that will influence your success include

• Domain Name - Relevance to your site context.
• Specific Keywords - Make this list now of keywords that will be used to locate your site via the search engines and their current popularity.
• Search engine - organic listings
• Search engine - paid listings
• Links from other web sites
• Email marketing
• Banner advertising 

If you are not sure how to approach areas such as keywords, speak to your web designer since they probably also deal with Search Engine Optimisation analysis and techniques to get found on the search engines. For instance, it may be advantageous to optimise your web site for more obscure sets of keywords rather than the most popular keywords. This is called "the Tail" and is a very successful way of getting visitors to your site in the early days. Other techniques involve making the links to your site easy to use and remember so that lots of other sites can easily promote your site.

Design and branding

Explain any existing design or branding guidelines.

Briefly outline the visual design of your web site. Do you already have a logo or artwork, or do you require this to be included in the quotation? Explain if the site will be visually linked to any existing branding or design. If a new design is required your web designer will require this brief to help them understand who the site should appeal to. Web designers may interpret your design literally so you need to be as clear as possible. Explain

• In-House styles - Elements to use such as Font-Faces, Colours, Logos and Branding.
• How the pages will be laid out in terms of page length, white space, pictures and artwork to be used and target audience.
• Include any sketches or the web addresses of similar sites you like (or dislike).
• What is the tone of the project (corporate / casual)?

Accessibility for disabled users

Decide on the level of accessibility appropriate for your web site.

It is now unlawful for a web site to be inaccessible to people with disabilities in the UK, US and Australia, among other countries. There are a range of public standards covering the issue, but the important one is the WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. A web site can attempt compliance to one of three levels:

• A - 'must'
• AA - 'should'
• AAA - 'may'

Level A is widely considered the minimum for legal compliance. AA and AAA are progressively more difficult to support and hence there is often a trade-off between compliance and cost. For the corporate or public sector AA is usually best practice, with smaller web sites better suited to A - AA.

A key element of this section is a clear statement that the contract will not be completed until the web site is checked for accessibility using one of the popular tools (e.g. W3C, Bobby or NetMechanic).

Deliverables

List the deliverables

The Deliverables for a project specify exactly what the designer must provide by the end of the contract period. These will usually include:

• The web site itself - usually a series of HTML pages, scripts, database, animations etc.;
• Documentation - a list of the pages along with a map of how they fit together;
• Clear information on how your company will manage the site once the contract has ended;
• A clear indication that the code has passed accessibility requirements.

Budget

Provide a budget for your project.

The Budget for your web site will be a key factor in the web site you receive. It is particularly important to remember that you may be charged for any changes you make to the design along the way. It is to your advantage to provide as much information in the brief as possible to avoid incurring these additional costs. Also, interactive elements on your pages will be expensive and you should always consider whether they add significantly to the user's experience. If not, leave them out.

Timetable

List the timetable for your project

Designers are often juggling conflicting priorities, and web development timetables are highly prone to slippage. Always ensure that the timetable for developing your site includes ample time for checking and evaluation prior to launch. Also, provide the designer with clear milestones for delivery within the project, including dates for initial concepts, completion of functionality and sign-off of design.

It is important to establish clear lines of communication from the outset of the project. Make sure there is a single point of contact in your company and with your designers, and that all project-related information is passed through these two people. If possible, set up a closed email group or project management solution (such as www.basecamp) to allow everyone involved in the project to follow progress.

Support and maintenance

Decide on maintenance before you start.

Over the life of a web site, the maintenance can often be the most expensive and most overlooked aspect. Consider some of the following maintenance options:

• Content Management
  Allows for your own staff to maintain the web content themselves. Options range from the ability to make changes to text in existing pages, to a system allowing for new pages, images, files, forms and interactive elements to be maintained. Content Management is typically much more cost effective than other maintenance options, and has a fixed ongoing cost.
• Support contract / retainer
  You pay a fixed amount each month for entitlement to manual changes. Has the advantage of fixed costs, and requires less internal commitment than Content Management. However changes are slower to make, as they have to be communicated to an outside party, and this is typically the most expensive option.
• Pay-per-change
  You pay for individual changes, usually by the hour. This option can be the cheapest if your web site only requires a very small number of changes during it?s life. Usually a web site is not very effective unless it is kept up to date, and this option has the negative effect of encouraging this.

Copyright Statement

Include your copyright statement

Your design brief must include a clear statement of the ownership of copyright over the pages, code, content and images created or used in developing the site. In particular, you should ensure that rights over the coding of the pages remain with your project. Resolving this from the outset will greatly reduce the potential for disagreement later in the project.

Terms and Conditions

List the terms and conditions

The Terms and Conditions should lay out in detail exactly what is expected of the designer in terms of service provision, and should include the following:

• Will they be working on or off-site?
• Will payment be made in phases, in advance or on completion?;
• The expected level of consultation between designers and the project;
• A process for resolving conflict or disagreement (preferably through a third party).

Conclusion

If you cover all of these points in your brief, you'll find it a lot easier to get what you want from your web site You'll also have a much better idea of what you're looking for and what you should expect to get back when you commit to a developer. Good luck!

Additional Thoughts

Here are some thoughts and ideas on questions you should ask yourself. Some of them delve into the area of the Technical Brief but if they are important they should be included above since they may have an impact on the quotation.

• How are you currently positioned (i.e. perceived) within your market? (If you were a car, what would you be? Audi, Ford, Aston Martin, Ferrari, Vauxhall, Skoda etc.)
• How does this differ from how you wish to be positioned?
• What are the known issues that you are currently experiencing with your current web site?
• What business priorities are not currently being met by your existing web site?
• What objectives and goals do you have for your web site?
• What information do you want them to find on your site?
• What primary messages are you trying to communicate with your site visitors?
• What is the minimum internet browser target to base the site on (Internet Explorer / Firefox / Safari etc)?
• What is the minimum monitor target resolution (Normally 800x600 or 1024 x 768)?
• What is the minimum bandwidth target (Are you customers on dial-up or broadband)?
• What are the anticipated software plug-in requirements (Do you need Flash or other extras to be available for your site to run)?

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