Hermes IT Development Resource
Website Project Brief Template
Turn a vague request for “a new website” into a reviewable business and technical scope. This template helps a company prepare the decisions a development team needs before pricing, architecture, design, content, SEO, integrations, and launch planning can be confirmed.
Planning foundation
Define the business outcome before choosing features.
A useful website is built around a measurable customer action, an operating process, credible content, and a maintainable technical system—not only visual preferences.
Brief sections
Ten decisions to prepare before scope review.
Use the questions as a worksheet. Do not place passwords, API keys, customer records, private contracts, payment details, or unnecessary personal data into a public document.
Business objective
- Primary revenue or operating goal
- Action visitors should complete
- Current problem or bottleneck
- How success will be measured
Audience and market
- Customer type and decision-maker
- Target U.S. markets or service areas
- Languages and accessibility needs
- Questions and objections to answer
Project type
- New website
- Website redesign
- Website plus SEO
- Migration or platform replacement
Pages and conversion paths
- Core service and audience pages
- Quote, contact, apply, booking, or intake
- Trust, legal, case, and resource pages
- Navigation and internal-link ownership
Content ownership
- Who writes and approves copy
- Existing assets that may be reused
- Claims requiring evidence
- Photography, video, logos, and permissions
Integrations
- CRM, email, calendar, payments, or booking
- Maps, inventory, portals, APIs, or automation
- Data owner and access method
- Fallback when a provider is unavailable
SEO and migration
- Query-to-page ownership
- Current URLs and redirect requirements
- Metadata, schema, canonicals, and sitemaps
- Content and ranking evidence to protect
Analytics and qualification
- GA4 and Search Console ownership
- CTA, intake, preview, and handoff events
- Qualified-lead definition
- Privacy-safe reporting boundaries
Quality and compliance
- Mobile and browser requirements
- Accessibility and security expectations
- Privacy, legal, evidence, and claims review
- Performance and regression gates
Timing and budget approach
- Desired launch window and dependencies
- Decision-makers and approval cadence
- Phased release or full launch
- Budget range or discovery-first planning
Expected output
A development team should be able to review these five layers.
The final scope may change after discovery, but unresolved assumptions should be visible before implementation begins.
- Business
- Goal, audience, offer, conversion, success metric, decision owner.
- Content
- Pages, messages, evidence, assets, approvals, migration responsibilities.
- Technical
- Platform, integrations, data flows, hosting, security, accessibility, performance.
- Search
- Query ownership, architecture, redirects, metadata, schema, analytics, indexation.
- Delivery
- Phases, dependencies, acceptance criteria, testing, handoff, maintenance.
Scope boundaries
A clear brief reduces uncertainty; it does not remove it.
Third-party providers, content delays, approval changes, legacy systems, search engines, compliance decisions, and newly discovered technical risks can affect final scope, timing, and cost.
A responsible estimate follows review of scope, content, integrations, risks, and dependencies.
Timing depends on approvals, access, content, providers, testing, and accepted scope changes.
Architecture and content can be improved, but rankings, traffic, leads, and revenue are not guaranteed.
The structured project brief is reviewed locally before an explicit email handoff.
Frequently asked questions
Questions before project discovery.
What should a website project brief include?
A useful brief should define the business goal, target audience, required pages, content ownership, integrations, SEO requirements, analytics, accessibility, approval process, timing, and budget approach.
Is this template only for a new website?
No. It can be used for a new website, a redesign, or a website-plus-SEO project. Redesign projects should also document current URLs, rankings, analytics, redirects, content migration, and technical dependencies.
Does completing a brief guarantee a fixed price or launch date?
No. Pricing and timing depend on discovery, content readiness, integrations, approvals, technical risk, third-party systems, and the final approved scope.
Should SEO be included before development starts?
Search ownership, URL structure, redirects, metadata, internal linking, structured data, content requirements, analytics, and conversion paths are easier to protect when they are planned before design and development are finalized.
Website project review
Convert the template into a structured project brief.
The existing workflow prepares a local summary for review and explicit email handoff. Submitted values are not added to analytics.