A website brief stops a new site drifting towards the average

You are about to commission a new website or a redesign, and someone has asked you for a website brief. Most owners write a row of adjectives (modern, clean, professional) or a page list borrowed from a competitor. Neither says what to decide, so the designer and the developer decide for you. The safe decision is always the average one, and you end up with a site like everyone else’s.

When I rebuilt my studio’s site, bespokeforgestudio.com, in September and October 2026, I wrote the brief before I designed anything. It did more for the result than any tool.

The first line of a brief is about the buyer, not the pages

The page list matters least, because it falls out of everything else. What matters is one sentence about the person you are building for.

Mine said, in short, that a sceptical, competent buyer who has outgrown cheap solutions should land on the site and feel settled. Not excited. Settled, the way you feel when you hand a hard problem to someone who has clearly solved it before.

That sentence did a lot of work. “Settled” ruled out bright gradients, countdowns and anything that shouts, and ruled in calm type, plain words and one obvious next step. “Sceptical” meant every claim would be doubted. “Competent” meant I could skip the explanations a beginner needs.

Write your buyer the same way: what they know, what they doubt, and what they should feel when they leave. If you wrote “impressed”, look again. Impressed fades by the next tab.

A sceptical buyer believes only what they can check

The second part of my brief said what the buyer must be able to verify. Every figure names its client, the tool that measured it and the date, and comes from something a visitor can open, such as a public status page, a security grade or a PageSpeed run.

The homepage’s proof band carries figures, never adjectives, including the site’s own speed under the client name “This site”. In PageSpeed Insights it scores 99 to 100 for performance on a phone and 100 on desktop, measured on 9 October 2026. Anyone can run the same test.

Your proof will differ. It might be reviews on a platform you do not control, an accreditation someone can look up, dated photographs of finished work, or clients who agreed to be named. List it before anyone designs, because proof decides the layout.

Anti-references rule out more than references rule in

Ask an owner what they like and you get a mood board. Ask what they never want to look like and you get decisions. My brief named four kinds of site to avoid:

• The software startup: blue-to-purple gradients, glowing cards, sparkles beside the letters AI.
• The freelancer portfolio: chatty copy, a headshot as the hero, a gallery before any problem is named.
• The big agency: smiling stock photographs, award badges, promises that could mean anything.
• The theme demo: identical blocks, filler text nobody replaced, the colours the theme shipped with.

My references were the restraint of the best product sites, the confidence of a serious newspaper and the calm of an architecture studio. They set a direction. The anti-references held it, because they gave me something specific to point at when a page started to slide.

And pages did slide. A warm amber accent crept back in twice. I took it out both times, then wrote “no warm or amber accent” at the top of the brief, where nobody could miss it.

The brand comes first because every page inherits it

Every page inherits the logo, the typeface and the colours, so a brand that changes halfway through means redoing every page before it.

I started with the logo, in Canva. It has a lettered wordmark, and a monogram in which the p and the f of BespokeForge share one stem, so the two letters read as a key. I turned my artwork into a clean SVG with Claude. Then I worked out colour and type in Claude Design over three rounds. I threw the first round out, because it was the old site in a new coat. I settled the brand on 2 October. One typeface, Outfit, at two weights. One accent, cerulean, for proof and action. Navy for weight. A white page.

Each “one” closed a question that would otherwise have been reopened on every page.

You may not need a new brand, but you need the current one written down: the logo files, the typeface, and each colour with its job. Decide it before the pages, not during them.

A drawing is cheap to change and a built page is not

With the brand fixed, I designed every page in Claude Design, one board per page, and went round until each looked right. The file for the inner pages reached version 29 before I was happy with its last board. I built no page until its board was right.

Then I built the site one page at a time in Claude Code. I use it as my IDE, just a much faster one, and every decision in the build is mine.

Do the same with whoever builds yours. Arguing about a built page is expensive, because everyone is defending work already done. Ask for each page drawn, approve it in writing, and let nothing unapproved be built.

Every tool drifts towards the average, so the brief has to be the yardstick

Claude Code made the build fast. Like every tool built on a large language model, it also drifts, quietly and always towards the average website. You get something plausible, with the right parts in nearly the right places.

On 3 October the new homepage looked finished and still was not the page I had drawn. The buttons in a row of cards did not line up, and the spacing had wandered. Once I knew to look, I saw the same pull everywhere. The inner pages’ headings came out at 64 pixels against the homepage’s 56, because the biggest size was the obvious choice. The first homepage was calm, correct and completely still, when the brief asked for a site that feels alive.

None of that was broken. All of it would have reached a buyer as a vague sense that the site was ordinary.

So I kept the brief open beside the build, compared every page with its board section by section, and read every page the way a visitor gets it. Each time something drifted, I wrote the correction into the brief as a rule the next page had to follow.

People drift too. A busy designer reaches for last month’s layout, and a developer for the theme’s defaults. Whoever builds your site, the brief is what you hold them to. I tell the whole build in I rebuilt my own studio’s website.

A website brief template where every line is a decision

The brief below has fourteen sections. Each has an instruction and an example, taken from my own brief where I had one. A brief like this also makes any website redesign proposal you receive worth reading, because a studio can only answer what you asked.

1. The business in two sentences. What you do and who pays for it, in words a stranger understands. Example: “BespokeForge builds and runs infrastructure, websites, data and automation for established businesses that have outgrown cheap fixes.”
2. Who the site is for. One buyer: what they know and what they doubt. Example: “A sceptical, competent owner who understands technical debt and is not shopping on price.”
3. What they must feel. One word, and the word it must not be. Example: “Settled, not excited.”
4. What they must be able to check. Every claim a buyer will doubt, and where they can verify it. Example: “Every figure names its client, the tool that measured it and the date.”
5. What the site must do. The one action every page leads to. Example: “Book the first call. One primary button per screen.”
6. What exists now. Domain, hosting, CMS, email, and who holds each login. Example: “Domain in the company’s name. WordPress, admin held by the owner, not the last agency.”
7. Content. Who writes the words, what exists and what is missing. Example: “I write every word, and I settle each page’s words with its drawing.”
8. Proof you can show. The evidence you hold today, with its source. Example: “Public measurements only: a status page, a security grade, PageSpeed runs anyone can repeat.”
9. References. Two or three sites, each with the one thing you want from it. Example: “The calm of an architecture studio’s site, nothing else.”
10. Anti-references. The kinds of site yours must never resemble. Example: “No startup gradients, no freelancer portfolio, no agency fluff.”
11. Must-haves. The few things that are not negotiable. Example: “Fast on a phone. Every word editable without touching code. Motion that answers when you touch it.”
12. Must-nots. What you have already rejected, and why. Example: “No warm or amber accent. Rejected twice.”
13. Budget range and date. A range, not one figure, and the reason the date matters. Example: “Between the least worth doing and the most I will spend, live before the spring trade show.” For a feel of the range, my prices are on the pricing page.
14. Who decides. One person who signs off each page. Example: “I sign off every page. Nothing is built until I have.”

The bare version, to copy:

Website brief for [business], [date]

1. The business in two sentences:
2. Who the site is for:
3. What they must feel:
4. What they must be able to check:
5. The one action the site must drive:
6. What exists now, and who holds the logins:
7. Content:
8. Proof you can show:
9. References:
10. Anti-references:
11. Must-haves:
12. Must-nots:
13. Budget range and date:
14. Who decides:

If a stranger cannot say who the site is for, the brief is not done

Run this test this week. Write sections 1 and 2 of the template. Read them aloud to someone who does not know your business. Then ask: who is this site for, and what should that person do on it? If they cannot answer both, the brief is not done, and no designer will rescue it. If they can, the rest is an afternoon.

For a second opinion on whether it holds, bring it to the free twenty-five minute call. If your current site has grown in place and you want to know what is worth keeping first, start with the audit. It is credited in full against a build or a retainer that follows. The website redesign page shows how I turn a brief into a finished site.