There’s no perfect brief for a web design agency.
Every project, and every client, is unique and different. It’s our job to understand that and interpret their needs accordingly. However, from years of kick-off meetings and discovery sessions, I think it would be helpful to share some general guidelines for those thinking of approaching an agency with a new brief.
These are some tips that will help you better define exactly what you need, and help an agency (like Kooba!) better understand the ways that we can help you. If you’re considering a website project in the near future, it should be a useful guide.
Start with strategy
Your website is just one part of a wider marketing strategy, and it’s always important for an agency to understand what that wider strategy is. Of course, any agency worth their salt will do their due diligence in researching and analysing your broader business strategy, but it can still be helpful to communicate exactly what your strategic goals are. This is especially true if these objectives have recently changed, or if existing brand strategies don’t directly match future plans.
Clarify your existing pain points
Typically you’ve come to a digital agency for a reason. Perhaps your CMS has become unusable, or your website isn’t ranking well on search engines. Maybe (and there’s nothing wrong with this!) your website just doesn’t look as good as you think it should. Either way, an honest assessment of your existing issues will help an agency provide an accurate diagnosis, and allow them to focus on the most urgent problems.
Inversely, it is important to outline what you like about your existing website! As the saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Imagine what success looks like
It is always useful to define problems, but it’s also important to express your vision of success. Ask yourself; what does an effective website for my business look like? Who will enjoy using it? What will it feel like to interact with? This will help create a list of goals for an agency to pursue methodically.
Keep in mind that a good agency should help you do this. At Kooba, for instance, we provide clients with moodboards full of inspiration from competitor websites, industry-specific imagery, and existing digital solutions. These give clients a sense of the “look and feel” for their desired website, and provide clarity ahead of the actual design phase.
Work by numbers
Any vision of success should be backed by cold, hard, quantifiable objectives. These criteria will match the desired outcomes of your website, and provide design teams with a concrete objective to strive towards. They’ll also give you a great yardstick to use once your website goes live.
Numbers aren’t everything, but they can be your most honest guide when it comes to digital success. For a better understanding of the basics of web design metrics you can check out our blog on the topic here.
Build the conversation
Ultimately, an agency’s job is to help you. That begins at the very start, so if you’re concerned about how exactly to define success criteria, it never hurts to ask for advice. Often we can help clarify objectives simply by discussing your issues and gaining a more grounded understanding of your business.
In the end, it all starts with a conversation. If you’d like to begin discussing your project with Kooba, don’t hesitate to get in touch today with our expert team.
