A brief is not a document. It is a shared understanding. Where it exists, the project succeeds. Where it is missing, no methodology will save it. Here are the twelve questions we ask on the first call.
The twelve questions
- Which single metric has to move?
- Where does your traffic come from today — volume, channels, quality?
- Who makes the final buying decision on your client’s side?
- What is the average order — or the average contract?
- Which three competitors do you watch most closely?
- What single business promise do you want to embody?
- Who edits the site day to day?
- Which third-party tools have to be integrated — CRM, ERP, email?
- What is the real deadline, not the hoped-for one?
- What is the total budget — build plus twelve months of running it?
- How many people sign off on each deliverable?
- What must NOT be on the site?
Question twelve matters most
Asking what must not appear forces the client to think in the negative. That is often where you learn they refuse to have a blog, dread looking “too technical”, or need a subject kept out of the tone entirely.
Without that question those constraints surface mid-project — and cost weeks of rework.
What a brief should produce
A two-page PDF, dated, signed by both sides, carrying the twelve answers. It is worth more than any contract.