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Planning & business/An FMN practical guide

How to write a useful brief for your company website

Turn “we need a better website” into defined audiences, content, complete journeys and measurable acceptance criteria.

How to write a useful brief for your company website
FMN / Ideas that move you forward

Give each audience a next step

Your site may serve buyers, partners and applicants. Give each group a clear route and define the main outcome for each page. A service page should explain scope and lead to a relevant inquiry. Include what information a buyer needs before contacting you instead of relying on a prominent button alone.

Prepare content and ownership

Inventory pages, images and documents, marking what to keep, rewrite or remove. Assign an approver for each language. Use verified project evidence; where client work cannot be published, explain your process with a clearly labelled example. Do not present invented outcomes as completed projects or guarantee results you cannot establish.

Describe what happens after every action

Specify form validation, where inquiries arrive and the success and error states. Include Arabic direction, phone formatting, mobile use and accessibility. Record important old URLs and their new destinations before a redesign. Acceptance criteria should describe completed tasks, not simply how many pages the team has produced.

Plan launch and measurement

Agree on a few useful events such as completed inquiries or booking requests. Check consent requirements for your tracking setup. Confirm content ownership, infrastructure renewals and support responsibilities. Test public pages without an admin session and on a slow connection, then verify that every inquiry reaches its agreed destination.

A practical brief you can prepare with your team

Describe the company, the audiences you serve and the questions that visitors need answered. List the main pages and assign the owner of each page’s content. Include the systems that forms or accounts must connect to.

  • Primary goal and meaningful conversion event.
  • Arabic and English content responsibilities.
  • Required forms, destinations and confirmation states.
  • Existing URLs that need migration.
  • Hosting, domain and post-launch ownership.

Example: make a service page answer a buyer’s questions

A useful service page explains the problem, suitable users, deliverables and how the first discussion works. The inquiry can carry the chosen service so the visitor does not repeat context. After submission, the customer should understand that the message was received and what happens next.

Review every contact channel: email opens a compose window, a messaging link points to the right number, and a form reaches its agreed destination. Do not stop at checking that the button looks clickable.

Check handover before approving the launch

Ask for access ownership, renewal dates, editing instructions and an explanation of how forms and backups are monitored. Verify important pages on small screens in both languages and test error handling without an admin account.

Separate launch acceptance from long-term search or sales outcomes. The team can verify working links, readable content and technical setup at launch; business results require ongoing measurement and improvement after real visitors begin using the site.

Turn insight into action

Your next practical steps

  • Assign a content owner for both languages.
  • Test the outcome of every main action.
  • Map old URLs before a redesign.

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