A vague brief gets a vague estimate — and a vague estimate becomes a change request every week. A good brief takes an hour to write and turns the first conversation into a fixed price with a date on it. Put these ten things in it.
1. What the business does and how it makes money
One paragraph. Who pays you, for what, how often. The product must serve the revenue flow; an agency that does not understand the flow will design for the wrong thing.
2. Who the users are
Buyers, tenants, guests, agents, managers, partners — each group, what they need to do, and on what device they will do it.
3. What exists today
Current site, CRM, spreadsheets, portals you list on, WhatsApp numbers, social accounts. Include what you hate about each. Migration is where projects quietly double in size.
4. What "done" looks like
Not features — outcomes. "An agent gets a Bayut lead on their phone within a minute." "A guest books and pays without calling." Three to five of these define the project better than any feature list.
5. The integrations
Portals, payment gateways, WhatsApp, mapping, accounting, email. Name them. Each one is real work and a real line in the quote.
6. Content: who writes it and when
Text, photos, listings data, translations. If the agency writes it, say so. If you do, say when. Late content is the number-one cause of late launches.
7. The decision-maker
One person who can say yes. Committees approve prototypes in weeks; a person approves them in a day.
8. Timeline and what drives it
A launch event, a season, a licence date, a funding round — say what the real deadline is and why. Agencies plan differently around a hard date.
9. Budget range
Not to be talked up to — to be scoped down to. Telling an agency your range lets them propose the version of the product that fits it, instead of the version that does not.
10. What you want after launch
Do you want to run it yourself, or have the agency stay on? Hosting, updates, new features, growth work — the answer changes the build.
A brief is not a request for a price. It is the first page of the scope you will sign.
Our brief builder asks exactly these questions and writes the brief for you in two minutes. Or read how we work to see what happens next.
