The time has come for you to change your website, great. So all you need to do now is hire a Digital Marketing Agency and let them run with it right? Wrong! As qualified as your agency are, they aren’t living and breathing your brand. It’s so important to write a good design brief to equip your agency with as much information as you can so they can come back with a design proposal that absolutely meets your needs. We believe that the four main areas below are what makes a good design brief.
Audience & Competitors
Once you have come up with your budget and a realistic timeframe for your website project you need to think about who you are targeting. What kind of career do they have? Where are they based? Is there a particular age range your product or information is aimed at? If you have already done your own persona work then make sure your agency have access to it along with any user experience research you have done on your existing site (if applicable).
Now that you know your audience, what is it that you want them to get from you? Whether it is information, a quick hit sale or the start of a relationship you want to nurture, your website will need to reflect that with clear sign posting and calls to action. The more your agency knows about what you want to get out of your digital “shop front” the better the overall results for you.
And it is always, in any situation within business it’s beneficial to understand what your competitors are doing. Tell your agency who they are, what they do well, how their offering differs to yours and what you think it means for what you should be doing. This kind of information in your website brief will help your agency give you the edge.
Website Objectives
Your business’ KPIs are going to be what your website centres around, so be clear on what it is they are. KPIs tend to be leads into a business, awareness, downloads, sales etc. And everything you do online should be measurable, data is King. Think about how you are measuring performance now, is that working for you, could it be better or do you want it to be completely different. Giving your new agency access to things like Google Analytics will give them a steer on how your website is currently performing, will allow them to take into account where you want to get to and how to get there when they come back to you with their proposal.
Technical & Branding Requirements
Chances are if you have been thinking about a new website, you have been thinking about the functionality and your preference on a CMS. Remember you aren’t tied to your current CMS, so do you research to see which suits your need the most (take a look at our guides for more information.) But really think about the functionality in terms of what you need day to day including how it will interact with any CRM and backend systems, prioritise so you focus on the end user needs. At the Frontend make sure your agency knows your Branding needs. Your site is your shop window so it needs to reflect who you are so make sure your agency fully understands your brand guidelines.
Aftercare
It’s all very well having a nice new shiny website but you need to have the right long term strategy in place. With the site being built you will need to consider who will be hosting the site and then long term, what your plans are for SEO because your site needs to be found. If you don’t currently have someone in house to manage your future SEO strategy then we would advise taking on an agency to help with this process.
To make this whole process a lot easier we have put together this Website Briefing Document to help you get the website you really want. If you have any questions please give us a call, we are always more than happy to talk you through the process and of course respond to your website brief.