Website Strategy
How to Brief a Web Designer — What to Prepare Before You Start
A good design brief tells your web designer who you are, who your customers are, what you want your website to do, and what success looks like — in that order. Without a clear brief, projects run over time, over budget, and rarely deliver what the client actually had in mind. This post gives you a simple framework for briefing a web designer so the project runs smoothly and the result is exactly what your business needs.
Most website projects do not go wrong because somebody chose the wrong shade of pink, picked the wrong image or changed their mind about a button. They usually go wrong much earlier. The brief was too thin, the goals were unclear, the audience was not defined, the decision-makers were not aligned or the project started before the founder understood what the website actually needed to achieve.
A website is not just a design asset. It is a commercial tool. For a female founder, coach, consultant, creative, service provider or local business owner, the website may need to build trust, explain the offer, position the brand, improve search visibility and move a potential client towards an enquiry. That is why a good brief matters. It gives the designer the context needed to make strategic choices rather than simply making something look polished.
This does not mean you need to arrive with a corporate document or a fully finished plan. You do not need to know every technical term or have every sentence of copy ready. But you do need to be honest about what is working, what is not working and what would make the project feel successful. The best web design for female founders begins with business clarity, not decoration.
A good brief also protects both sides. It helps the designer understand scope, priorities and decision-making criteria. It helps you compare designers more confidently because you can see who is asking thoughtful questions and who is only responding to surface-level style preferences. When the brief is stronger, the project has a much better chance of staying focused, calm and commercially useful.
Why most website projects go wrong
The most common problem is an unclear goal. A founder may say they want a better website, but better can mean many different things. It might mean more enquiries, higher-quality enquiries, clearer positioning, stronger local search visibility, a more premium feel, easier navigation, better mobile experience or a smoother application process. If the goal is not named, the design has nothing solid to work towards.
Another common issue is briefing the designer only on taste. Taste matters, especially for a founder-led brand, but it is not enough. Saying you want the website to feel elegant, modern or feminine gives a designer some direction, but it does not explain who needs to trust you, what they need to understand or what action the page needs to encourage. A strategic designer will want to know what the design is supposed to do, not only what it should look like.
Projects also become difficult when content is underestimated. A website cannot communicate clearly if the offers, page structure and message are still vague. Design can support the message, but it cannot fully rescue a business that has not explained what it sells, who it helps or why someone should choose it. This is why soKate Studio treats structure, positioning and copy direction as part of the process rather than something separate from design.
What a good website brief should include
A useful brief does not need to be long, but it should answer the questions that shape the project. The clearer these areas are, the easier it is for your designer to make decisions that support the business rather than guessing based on style alone.
Your audience
Who the website is for, what they care about, what makes them hesitate and what they need to understand before they enquire, buy or apply.
Your goals
What the website needs to do commercially, whether that is increasing enquiries, improving trust, selling a specific service, ranking locally or making your offer easier to understand.
Your competitors
The businesses your clients may compare you with, including what you like, dislike or want to move away from in your wider market.
Your tone
How the brand should sound and feel, including whether it needs to be calm, premium, direct, editorial, warm, polished, playful or more authoritative.
Your pages
The core pages you think you need, plus any sales pages, location pages, service pages, blog content, application pages or landing pages that matter to the project.
Your constraints
Budget, timeline, content readiness, technical requirements, photography, brand assets, approval process and anything that could affect the project once it begins.
Think beyond the homepage
Many founders start a brief by thinking about the homepage because it is the most visible page. But a good website project considers the whole journey. A visitor may land on a service page, a blog post, a location page, a landing page or an application page before they ever see the homepage. That means your brief should explain the wider structure, not just the first impression.
For example, if you sell a signature service, the website may need a focused service page with strong positioning and clear next steps. If you are running a campaign or want to promote one specific offer, landing page design services may be more appropriate than relying on a general page. If you want to build authority over time, blog content and SEO-led pages may need to be part of the plan from the beginning.
This is one reason web design for female founders should not be treated as a simple visual refresh. The structure of the site matters. The internal links matter. The journey from interest to enquiry matters. A beautiful homepage will not do enough if the rest of the website does not support the decisions your audience needs to make.
Questions your designer should be asking you
The quality of a designer’s questions tells you a lot about the quality of the project you are likely to have. A thoughtful designer will not only ask what colours you like. They will ask how the business works, what visitors need to understand and what the website needs to make easier.
What do you want visitors to do after landing on the site?
Which services, products or offers matter most commercially?
Who is the best-fit client and who is not a good fit?
Where are your current enquiries coming from, and where would you like them to come from?
What objections do people usually have before working with you?
Which pages are essential for launch, and which can wait until later?
What needs to feel different from your current website or online presence?
Red flags when hiring a web designer
A web designer does not need to have the same process as another studio, but there are warning signs that the project may become difficult. If the conversation stays entirely visual and never touches goals, audience, copy, SEO, pages or conversion, you may end up with a site that looks better but still does not work harder for the business.
Red flag 1
They focus only on how the website will look and do not ask about goals, audience or conversion.
Red flag 2
They cannot explain how page structure, copy and SEO will be considered before design begins.
Red flag 3
They promise a very fast turnaround without checking whether your content, assets and decisions are ready.
Red flag 4
They avoid discussing budget clearly, which makes scope and expectations harder to manage later.
Red flag 5
They use generic templates for every business without considering your positioning or client journey.
What the soKate Studio process looks like from enquiry to launch
The soKate Studio process begins with understanding whether the project is the right fit. Instead of jumping straight into visuals, Katie Brown looks at the business, the current website or online presence, the audience, the offer and the outcome the founder wants. This helps make sure the project is shaped around the business rather than built around a generic template.
Once the project direction is clear, the next stage focuses on structure. That means deciding which pages are needed, what each page should achieve and how visitors will move through the site. For many founders, this is the moment where the website starts to feel less overwhelming. Instead of thinking about everything at once, the project becomes a clear set of decisions: who the page is for, what it needs to say and what action it should support.
Design then builds on that strategic foundation. The aim is not to create something that looks impressive in isolation, but something that feels aligned with the brand and easy for the right audience to understand. The design should support trust, clarity and commercial confidence. For founders who want to be found as well as remembered, this may also connect with broader SEO work through SEO for female-founded businesses and the national female web designer UK hub.
The launch stage includes careful checks, mobile review, content review and final preparation so the website is not simply put live and forgotten. A strong website should be something you can use, share and build on. The goal is a site that feels more mature than the version before it, but still sounds like the founder and supports the way the business actually works.
How to prepare without overthinking it
A good brief is not about having all the answers. It is about bringing the right raw material into the conversation. If you can explain what the business does, who it serves, why the current website is not enough and what would make the next version feel successful, you are already in a stronger position than many founders who begin with only visual preferences.
Give your designer context. Share what clients usually ask before working with you. Share the objections that come up. Share the services that are profitable and the services you no longer want to push. Share the kind of enquiries you want more of and the kind you want fewer of. This information may feel obvious to you because you live inside the business every day, but it is essential for someone designing a website that needs to communicate on your behalf.
It also helps to be clear about budget and timeline from the beginning. A designer can make better recommendations when they understand the practical boundaries. If the budget is smaller, the project may need to prioritise essential pages. If the timeline is tight, content and decisions need to be ready earlier. If you want a more comprehensive strategic website, the scope needs to allow time for that thinking.
The purpose of a brief is not to control every creative decision. It is to give the designer enough strategic context to make better decisions with you. When the brief is clear, the project can be more collaborative, less reactive and much more focused on the outcome the business needs.
Ready to brief your next website properly?
If you want a website that is shaped around your business, your audience and the kind of enquiries you want more of, apply to work with soKate Studio and share what your current website needs to do next.
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