How to brief a Web Designer

“Make it modern.” “We’ll know it when we see it.” “Something like our competitor’s site, but better.”

If you’ve ever briefed a designer with words like these, you’re not alone, and you’re not to blame. Most people only commission design work a handful of times in their career, so nobody teaches you how to do it well. But here’s what we see again and again: a vague brief leads to missed expectations. More revision rounds, longer timelines, higher costs, and a result nobody’s quite happy with.

The good news? A great design brief isn’t long, and it isn’t technical. It just needs to cover the right five things. In this guide, we’ll walk through exactly what to include when you brief a designer, whether it’s for a new website, a rebrand, or a one-off project.

 

Why your design brief matters more than your budget

The best projects we’ve worked on didn’t start with the biggest budgets. They started with the clearest briefs. A clear brief does three things:

• It aligns expectations early. Everyone agrees on what “done” and “good” look like before any work begins.
• It reduces revision rounds. Most “the design isn’t right” moments trace back to something that was never said out loud at the start.
• It gets you better thinking. When designers understand the real problem, they can bring solutions you hadn’t considered, instead of just executing instructions.

A vague brief, by contrast, forces your designer to guess. Some guesses will be right. The expensive ones won’t be.

The 5 things every design brief needs

1. The problem, not the solution

Tell your designer what’s not working, not what to build.

It’s tempting to arrive with the answer: “we need a carousel on the homepage” or “we want a video header.” But prescribing the fix too early closes off better answers. Designers solve problems for a living. When you hand them a solution instead of a problem, you get exactly what you asked for, which isn’t always what you need.

Instead of this: “Add a carousel to the homepage.” Try this: “Enquiries have dropped off since last year, and we suspect people aren’t finding our services quickly enough.”

The second version gives your designer room to diagnose. Maybe the answer is a carousel. More often, it’s clearer navigation, sharper messaging, or a restructured homepage.

 

2. Who it’s for

Your audience shapes everything: tone, layout, imagery, even which pages exist.

“Everyone” is the most common answer we hear, and the least useful. A website designed for everyone speaks to no one. The more specific you can be about who you’re trying to reach, the more targeted every design decision becomes.

A useful audience description covers:

• Who they are: role, industry, situation (e.g. “NZ facilities managers comparing suppliers”)
• What they’re trying to do: get a quote, check credibility, book a consultation
• What they know already: are they experts, or is this all new to them?

“NZ facilities managers comparing suppliers” beats “everyone” every time.

 

3. What success looks like

Give your designer something to aim at.

“A better website” isn’t a goal; it’s a hope. Success criteria turn hope into something you can design toward and measure afterwards. Ask yourself: six months after launch, how will we know this worked?

Good success criteria sound like:

• More enquiries through the contact form
• Better-quality leads (fewer tyre-kickers, more genuine prospects)
• A booking made in under a minute
• Fewer support calls asking questions the website should answer

When success is defined up front, design decisions stop being matters of taste and start being matters of purpose.

 

4. What you like, and why

Examples are gold. But the why matters more than the links.

Collecting websites, brands, or designs you admire is genuinely helpful. It gives your designer a feel for your taste far faster than adjectives can. The trap is stopping at the list. “We like these five sites” tells a designer very little, because those five sites might share nothing in common.

The magic is in the why:

• “We like this site’s clarity. You instantly know what they do.”
• “We like how warm and human this brand feels, without being unprofessional.”
• “We like that this page gets you to the pricing in one click.”

Each why is a design principle your designer can carry into your project. A list of links is just homework.

 

5. The non-negotiables

Brand rules, must-keep content, deadlines, budget. Constraints shared early save rework later.

Nobody enjoys talking about limitations at the start of a creative project. It can feel like clipping wings before takeoff. But discovering a constraint late is far more painful than designing within it from day one. Before the project starts, be upfront about:

• Brand requirements: logo usage, colours, fonts, tone-of-voice guidelines
• Content that must stay: legal text, accreditations, key pages
• Technical requirements: systems it must integrate with, accessibility standards
• Timeline: especially hard deadlines like a launch event or campaign
• Budget: a range is fine, but silence helps no one

A good designer doesn’t see constraints as restrictions. They see them as the edges of the canvas.

 

What a good brief looks like in practice

You don’t need a 20-page document. In fact, please don’t write one. A single page covering the five points above will put you ahead of most briefs we’ve ever received.

 

Then expect a conversation. A good design partner will use your brief as a starting point and ask questions that sharpen it further. That back-and-forth is a feature, not a sign your brief failed.

The clearest briefs make the best projects

Briefing a designer well isn’t about knowing design. It’s about knowing your business, your audience, and what you want to change. Cover the problem, the audience, the definition of success, the references (with reasons), and the non-negotiables, and you’ve done your part. The rest is ours.

Thinking about a website project? We’d love to hear the problem, even if the brief isn’t written yet. Get in touch with Meta Digital, and we’ll help you shape it.