A redesign estimate can change dramatically after the project begins if the original brief only described how the new website should feel. Visual direction matters, but the cost and complexity often sit in content, integrations, migration and ownership.
Preparing those details does not require writing a technical specification alone. It requires identifying what the business knows, what needs discovery and who can make the relevant decisions.
Define what the new site must help people do
Choose the priority visitor tasks: understand a service, evaluate the company, explore work, read guidance or submit a relevant enquiry. Rank them. A homepage cannot give equal emphasis to every internal department without becoming difficult to navigate.
Describe current problems through examples. “Visitors ask which service includes landing pages” is more actionable than “the site feels dated.” Separate functional failures from preferences about colour, imagery or animation.
Inventory content and evidence
List existing pages and decide whether each should be kept, rewritten, consolidated or retired. Identify service descriptions, team information, approved work samples, photography and policies. Note which assets are ready and which require permission or production.
Assign a content owner. A designer cannot reliably infer the company's service boundaries, commercial promises or legal details from a few old pages. Late content decisions often force layouts to be redesigned after approval.
Identify accounts and dependencies
Record who controls the domain, DNS, hosting, CMS, analytics, forms, CRM and connected applications. Use role-based access where available. Avoid circulating passwords in a project document.
List integrations by purpose: where enquiries go, how bookings are created, which emails are triggered and which data must be retained. Include services that are easy to overlook, such as domain email and verification records. A website migration should not accidentally interrupt unrelated business systems.
Plan the transition
Capture the current URL inventory before changing structures. Decide which old pages have relevant new destinations and prepare redirects accordingly. Do not send every retired page to the homepage simply because it is convenient.
Agree where review happens, who can approve publication and how the team will respond if a critical issue appears after launch. Keep a recoverable copy of the previous configuration and content appropriate to the platform. The project should include a transition process, not only a launch button.
Write the brief as a decision document
- Priority audiences and visitor tasks.
- Required pages and reusable content types.
- Available assets and content owners.
- Integrations, account access and migration dependencies.
- Visual references with an explanation of what works.
- Budget range, timeline constraints and approval responsibilities.
Mark unknowns honestly. A discovery phase can resolve them, but an estimate should not silently assume they are simple. A prepared brief helps the agency propose the right work and helps the business recognise whether the proposal actually addresses its needs.
EBJ FIELD NOTES / REDESIGN BRIEF
| 01 Purpose | 02 Content | 03 Dependencies |
Prepare the business requirements and asset ownership before asking designers to estimate the work.
Put it to work
Prepare the business requirements and asset ownership before asking designers to estimate the work.
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