A website redesign often starts with a visual problem: the pages look dated, the brand has changed or competitors appear more polished. Those are useful signals, but they are only part of the brief. The stronger question is what visitors need to do and what currently gets in their way.
1. Who needs the website most?
Identify the people the site must serve. A first-time buyer, an existing customer and a job applicant may need very different information. Talk to the teams who hear their questions and, where possible, to the people themselves.
2. What should visitors be able to do?
Choose a few important tasks: compare services, book a call, find a product, complete an application or get support. Walk through each task on a phone and a laptop. Note confusing labels, missing information and unnecessary steps.
3. What content needs to change?
New layouts cannot make outdated information useful. List the pages you need, the content you can keep and the information someone must write or approve. Give each important page an owner. This makes the work and review schedule easier to plan.
4. What does your team need after launch?
Think about who updates the site, what they change most often and what support they need. A platform should fit those everyday responsibilities as well as the design. Agree training, access, maintenance and third-party costs before committing to an approach.
5. How will you know the experience is better?
Choose measures connected to the original problem. You might review enquiry quality, completed bookings or how easily someone finds an answer. Combine the numbers with feedback; a dashboard cannot explain every confusing moment.
Include accessibility checks from the start. W3C’s Easy Checks offers an introductory review of areas such as page titles, headings, image alternatives and keyboard access. These checks are a starting point, not a complete accessibility assessment.
Turn the answers into a brief
A good brief does not need to be long. Explain the audience, the tasks, the content, the practical constraints and the improvements you want to see. That gives your team a stronger basis for estimating the work than a list of favourite websites alone.
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