The importance of a great design brief based on our web design & SEO experiences in Barnsley & Sheffield

Hello hello!

So, this is a post covering, well, what it says on the tin.

Our blog posts are all about opinions and our experiences, and this one focusses on our experiences working with companies in Sheffield, Barnsley and the rest of Yorkshire and the importance of collecting a great brief before starting any SEO or web design project.

Ok, so; why is a brief so important?

Well it affords you the chance to get to know your client, get to know their products or services and get a feel for the way they work, how they want to be perceived and, most importantly: what their goals are from their online presence.

Sounds quite obvious I know, but you'd be surprised (or not if you're a designer) at how many companies know they need a website, but actually have no idea why.

What should you ask in your brief then? Well here are some things we'd recommend:

1. A full breakdown of your client's products and / or services
2. Why they do what they do
3. A bit of a history of the company
4. Do they have any existing branding (logos, stationary, a website, marketing collateral)
5. Why do they want a website
6. What do they want to achieve with their website; more sales, more leads, more exposure… what?
7. Do they have an overall marketing plan, and if so, how does the website fit into this overall strategy?
8. All the obvious stuff: colours liked and disliked, what feel do they want new website to have, is it going to sell things, do they want content management and hosting – all the things that you'd naturally ask

The main goal of all of this is to glean information from your client that you may not normally think of, particularly we find it useful to look at it from an overall marketing perspective; how does the client see this fitting in with their overall strategy, and does the rest of the marketing suite continue everything that they tell you about the prospective web design?

Armed with this information you are far better placed to make educated design and build decisions whilst carrying out meaningful keyword research and confidently implementing an effective SEO strategy.

Only a little post today, but hopefully one that will give you a little food for thought.

Have fun!

UPDATE 28th November 2009: We quite like this blog post, so to take it a little further we're going to look at it from the other side soon; how to write a creative brief. Keep your eyes peeled…

UPDATE: 14th December 2009: We've finally got the how to write a design brief post up!