Writing a website brief — 12 questions every client should answer

The website brief is the single document that decides whether your project goes well or badly, and most clients in Baku spend an hour on it and four months regretting that hour. A weak brief produces a weak proposal, which produces a misaligned scope, which produces a project that drags through eight rounds of revision because both sides were guessing at half the answers. The 12 questions below take a focused 2–3 hours to answer properly. They save 2–6 weeks of project time and almost always produce a better final site. This is a working design brief template you can use as-is.

Why the brief matters more than the budget

Studios quote against briefs. A vague brief — "we need a modern website for our business, around 7 pages" — produces a vague quote. The studio assumes the easy interpretation and prices accordingly. When the project starts and the real scope emerges (three languages, custom animations, integration with the booking system, hreflang, JSON-LD), the gap between brief and reality becomes scope-creep arguments, change requests, and bad feeling.

A specific brief — answering the 12 questions below — produces a specific quote. The price is more honest because the work is more visible. The project starts with both sides looking at the same thing.

The 12 questions, in order

1. What does your business actually do — in two sentences, plain language?

No marketing language. No "innovative solutions provider." What does the customer pay you for, and what do they get?

This question is the single most underrated. Half the briefs I see can't answer it cleanly, and the resulting sites can't either.

2. Who are your customers — specifically, with examples?

Not "businesses in Azerbaijan." Examples of real customers, what they do, what brought them to you. Three or four real names and stories.

The site has to speak to these people. Without knowing who they are, the site speaks to nobody.

3. What action do you want visitors to take on the site?

Buy something? Contact you for a quote? Book a consultation? Subscribe to a newsletter? Download a brochure? Call a phone number?

If there's more than one possible action, rank them. The most-important action gets the prime placement; the others get secondary placement.

4. What three or four competitors do you respect — or actively dislike?

Links to their websites. One sentence each on what they do well or badly. This isn't to copy them. It's to calibrate where you want to sit visually and structurally in the local field.

The studio's job is to make sure your site isn't accidentally identical to theirs.

5. What three or four websites do you find aesthetically right — from any industry?

References from outside your own category. A car brand site you like, a magazine site, a hotel site. One sentence each on what specifically you like — the typography, the photography, the calm, the energy, the way the navigation works.

This is more useful than "we want it modern and clean." Modern and clean is meaningless. A link to a specific site, with what you like about it, is actionable.

6. What content already exists, and what doesn't?

Logo and brand book — yes or no?
Copy for each page — drafted, brief notes, or nothing?
Photography — usable shots, stock-only, or to be commissioned?
Case studies — written, recorded, or to be created?
Translations needed?

This question alone determines 30–50% of project cost. A site where everything exists costs much less than one where everything needs to be made.

7. What languages does the site need?

Azerbaijani only? Azerbaijani + English? All three of Azerbaijani, English, Russian? Each additional language is not just translation — it's hreflang, URL structure, editorial workflow, font support for all three character sets.

8. What integrations does the site need?

CRM (which one)? Email marketing tool? Booking system? Payment gateway? Accounting system? ERP? Live chat? Analytics beyond Google?

Each integration is a small project. Listing them now is much cheaper than discovering them in week three.

9. How often will the site's content be updated, and by whom?

Once a quarter, by the studio?
Weekly, by a marketing person in-house?
Daily, by a content team of three?
Never — it's a brochure site that ships and stays?

This determines the CMS question. A site that updates monthly doesn't need a CMS. A site that updates daily does. A site that updates by a non-technical marketer needs a specific kind of CMS with specific permissions.

10. What's the deadline, and what's driving it?

"As soon as possible" is not a deadline. "Before our trade show on November 12" is a deadline. "Before the new product line launches in Q1 2027" is a deadline.

If there's no real deadline, say so. Honest "no rush, we want it done right" is fine. Pretend "ASAP" produces rushed work and disappointed buyers.

11. What's the budget range you're working in?

This is the question most clients want to avoid, and the question that saves the most time when answered honestly.

You don't need to say "we'll spend exactly 7,400 AZN." A range — "we're thinking somewhere between 4,000 and 8,000 AZN" — lets the studio scope to your actual constraint. Without it, they guess, propose what they think you can afford, and either over- or undershoot.

If the budget is fixed by a board or grant, say so. If you genuinely don't know, say "we don't have a number and want to see what range is reasonable for what we're describing."

12. How will you know the site is working — in concrete terms?

This is the question that should be on every project brief and isn't. After launch, how do you decide whether the site was worth the money?

• "50% more inquiries from the site in 6 months."
• "Top 3 on Google for our category in Baku in 9 months."
• "Reduce the time we spend explaining our service over WhatsApp by 80%."
• "Be presentable enough that we're not embarrassed to send a serious lead to it."

Even one of those is enough. Without it, "the site is fine" or "the site is broken" both become subjective.

How to deliver the brief

A one-page document, well-structured, with these 12 questions answered in 2–4 paragraphs each. Total length: 2–4 pages. No more.

Send it before the first conversation. The conversation then becomes a real discussion of your situation, not a 45-minute Q&A where the studio extracts the information by interrogating you.

Most clients send the brief during the conversation, or after. The few who send it before consistently get better proposals back, in less time.

What the studio should do with it

A good studio responds within 24–48 hours with one of three things:

1. A scoped proposal, with phases and prices, if the brief is complete enough.
2. A short list of follow-up questions, if specific gaps need filling.
3. An honest "this isn't a fit for us" with a recommendation to a studio that's better suited.

A studio that needs three meetings to produce a proposal from a complete brief is either inefficient or trying to anchor you to the relationship before the price arrives. Neither is in your interest.

At Qaynaq, the 12-question brief is the structure we ask for, and the proposal we write back maps onto it directly. If you'd like a template to start with, the structure above is the working version — answer it, send it, and we'll respond with a real scope: salam@qaynaq.com.