Why Briefs Decide Project Costs
PMI's Pulse of the Profession reports 52% of projects experience scope creep, and the trend is rising. Workamajig and other agency surveys consistently flag vague briefs as the #1 root cause of budget overruns on creative work.
Translation: 10 minutes spent writing a tight brief saves weeks of 'actually, can we also...' billed at hourly rates.
The 8 Sections That Actually Matter
From HubSpot, Webflow, Smashing Magazine, and A List Apart agency templates. These eight sections cover every legitimate decision a designer or developer needs to make without coming back to ask.
Jobs-to-be-Done — the Right Framing
Clayton Christensen's framing: customers 'hire' a product to do a job. Apply it to your site. Visitors hire your homepage to do something specific — book a quote, compare pricing, trust you enough to call.
Write your brief in JTBD language: 'users hire this page to decide if we're the right fit in under 30 seconds.' Beats a feature list every time.
Brand Voice in 60 Seconds
The fastest brand-voice format that actually works:
- ▸3 adjectives we are (e.g. confident, warm, plain-spoken)
- ▸3 adjectives we are NOT (e.g. corporate, jargon-heavy, ironic)
- ▸2 brands we admire — and one line on why
- ▸2 brands we don't — contrast clarifies more than positives
One Conversion Goal Per Page
Every page gets exactly one primary action. Force the choice. If you can't name the single action, the page doesn't have a job yet — and the designer will guess wrong.