A web development brief is the document — or conversation, or collection of emails — that tells your developer what you want built. It sounds simple. In practice, it's where most projects quietly start to go wrong.
We've reviewed a lot of briefs at RiaLab. The ones that lead to smooth, on-budget projects share certain qualities. The ones that lead to blown timelines, unexpected invoices, and frustrated clients tend to repeat the same mistakes — often made by smart, well-intentioned business owners who simply didn't know what to include.
This guide covers the most common mistakes, with a clean checklist at the end you can use before sending your next brief.
Table of Contents
- Mistake 1: Trying to Build the Perfect Version First
- Mistake 2: Building Features for One Customer
- Mistake 3: "The Content Will Come Later"
- Mistake 4: "Something Like That Website" Is Not a Brief
- Mistake 5: No Definition of Done
- Mistake 6: Forgetting to Mention Third-Party Tools
- Mistake 7: The Decision-Maker Isn't in the Room
- Mistake 8: No Budget Range
- Mistake 9: Describing the Company Instead of the Customer
- Mistake 10: Treating Every Page as Equal Priority
- The Brief Checklist
- A Final Note
Mistake 1: Trying to Build the Perfect Version First
This is the most expensive mistake on this list — and the most common among first-time founders and small business owners.
Picture a Melbourne homewares brand launching an e-commerce store. They spend four months refining the design: tweaking the product card layout, debating font weights, adjusting the checkout button colour from #2D2D2D to #1A1A1A. The developer is on standby. The launch keeps getting pushed.
When the site finally goes live, real customers immediately start abandoning the cart — not because of the button colour, but because the shipping cost only appears at the final checkout step. A problem that would have been visible within two weeks of launch took four months to discover.
The reality of building digital products is this: the market will teach you things no amount of internal review can predict. Your first version should be good enough to go live and good enough to learn from — not perfect. Perfection is what version three looks like, after you've had real users telling you what actually matters.
This is called iterative development, and it's how every serious tech company builds products. Launch a focused, functional version. Collect real feedback. Improve with purpose. Repeat.
A brief that says "we need everything done perfectly before launch" is a brief that will either delay indefinitely or exhaust its budget before it reaches real customers.
What to do instead: Define your MVP — the minimum version that solves the core problem for your customer. List your "must-have" features separately from your "nice-to-have" features. Plan to launch the must-haves, then iterate.
Mistake 2: Building Features for One Customer
This one is quietly devastating for small businesses, and it usually comes from a good place — not wanting to lose a client.
The scenario: you have a wholesale client who places large orders. She calls and says, "I'd really love it if the website could let me set up a recurring monthly order. If you build that, I'll definitely keep ordering."
You tell your developer to build it. Three months later, the feature is live. Your wholesale client uses it twice, then switches suppliers anyway. No other customer ever uses it. You've spent $3,000–$8,000 building a feature for an audience of one.
A feature earns its place in your product when a meaningful portion of your customers need it — not when one customer requests it. This is true even if that one customer seems important right now.
The right question isn't "does this customer want this feature?" It's "how many customers would use this feature, and what would it mean for the business if they could?"
Custom features for individual clients are sometimes appropriate — but only when that client represents significant, reliable, and measurable revenue, and only when the feature is built under a separate agreement that reflects the actual cost.
What to do instead: Keep a feature request log. If the same request appears from three or more independent customers, it's worth building. One request — even a loud one — is a data point, not a directive.
Mistake 3: "The Content Will Come Later"
It won't. Or rather, it will — six weeks after the developer is waiting for it, while the project sits at 90% complete and both sides are frustrated.
Content — the words, images, and media that go on your website — takes longer than almost every client expects. Writing good copy requires thinking clearly about your business, your audience, and what you want people to do. Most business owners underestimate this.
When content arrives late, it often doesn't fit the design it was built around. Paragraphs are too long. Images are the wrong ratio. The "brief bio" for the About page is three lines; the space was designed for three paragraphs.
What to do instead: Treat content as a deliverable with its own deadline, agreed before development begins. Decide early: will you write it, will your developer help structure it, or will you hire a copywriter? Whatever the answer, put it in the brief.
Mistake 4: "Something Like That Website" Is Not a Brief
Sending three URLs and saying "I want something like these" is a starting point, not a brief.
Those websites were built for different businesses, different audiences, different budgets, and different technical constraints. What you're responding to is the visual surface — you can't see the decisions behind it.
Reference sites are useful context. They become a problem when they replace actual thinking about your own business. Your developer needs to understand your customers, your goals, and your constraints — not reverse-engineer someone else's.
What to do instead: Use reference sites to communicate aesthetic preferences ("I like the clean layout of this one", "I like how this one handles mobile navigation"). But pair them with a clear description of your own business, audience, and goals.
Mistake 5: No Definition of Done
How will you know when the website is finished?
This sounds obvious, but most briefs don't answer it. "When it looks good" is not a definition. "When everything works" is not a definition. These are feelings, not criteria.
Without a clear definition of done, projects drift. New requests get added. The goalposts move. What was a six-week project becomes a four-month one — and nobody is quite sure how it happened.
What to do instead: Define the deliverables explicitly. List every page. List every feature. List what third-party tools need to be integrated. Agree on how many rounds of revisions are included. Write it down before work begins.
Mistake 6: Forgetting to Mention Third-Party Tools
"Oh, we also use Xero for invoicing." "We have a booking system called Timely — it needs to connect to the website." "Our CRM is HubSpot, can it sync with the contact form?"
These details, mentioned casually mid-project, can change the scope significantly. Integrating with a third-party system isn't always complicated — but it's almost never free, and it sometimes requires rethinking work that's already been done.
What to do instead: List every tool your business currently uses. Your POS system, your booking platform, your email marketing tool, your accounting software, your CRM. Even if you're not sure which ones need to connect to the website, give your developer the full list and let them flag the ones that matter.
Mistake 7: The Decision-Maker Isn't in the Room
The brief was written by the marketing coordinator. The feedback will come from the operations manager. The final sign-off is with the CEO, who has strong opinions about the colour blue.
This is one of the most reliable ways to derail a project. If the person who has final approval isn't involved in the brief, their feedback arrives late — usually after significant work has been done — and often contradicts decisions that were already agreed upon.
What to do instead: Identify the single person with final sign-off authority before the project begins, and make sure that person has reviewed and approved the brief. Not the whole team. One person.
Mistake 8: No Budget Range
Clients often withhold their budget, worried that sharing it means the developer will spend every dollar of it.
This logic backfires. Without a budget range, your developer can't make informed recommendations. They might propose a custom-built solution when a well-configured platform would serve you better at a third of the cost. Or they'll underprice to win the work and cut corners to stay profitable.
Sharing a budget range is not handing over a blank cheque. It's giving your developer the information they need to propose the right solution.
What to do instead: Share a range, not a precise number. "We're working with $8,000–$12,000 for this project" gives your developer useful constraints while still leaving room for the right approach to emerge.
Mistake 9: Describing the Company Instead of the Customer
Many briefs read like a company profile — the founding story, the mission statement, the values. This information has its place, but it answers the wrong question.
The question a brief needs to answer is: who is coming to this website, what are they trying to do, and what do you want them to do when they get there?
A website is not a monument to your business. It's a tool that helps your customers do something. The brief should reflect that.
What to do instead: Write one paragraph describing your target customer — not your company. Who are they? What problem are they trying to solve? What would make them trust you enough to get in touch or make a purchase?
Mistake 10: Treating Every Page as Equal Priority
When everything is a priority, nothing is.
A brief that says "all pages are important" gives the developer no way to allocate attention. The homepage, the pricing page, and the legal disclaimers page are not equally important — and pretending they are leads to a website where nothing gets the focused attention it deserves.
What to do instead: Rank your pages by importance to the business goal. Which page needs to convert visitors? Which page will most customers see first? Which pages exist purely for compliance? Be explicit about where the design energy should be concentrated.
The Brief Checklist
Use this before you send your brief to any developer.
About your business and audience
- One paragraph describing your target customer (not your company)
- What you want visitors to do when they land on your site (the primary action)
- What "success" looks like for this website — how will you measure it?
Scope and content
- A complete list of every page required
- Features separated into must-haves and nice-to-haves
- Confirmation of who is responsible for writing the copy — and by when
- All brand assets ready: logo (vector format), brand colours (hex codes), fonts
- All photography and imagery sourced or commissioned
Technical requirements
- Full list of third-party tools your business uses (CRM, booking, payments, email, accounting)
- Which of those tools need to connect to the website
- Who will manage the website after launch — and how technical are they?
- Any existing platform preferences (WordPress, Shopify, custom)
Project and process
- Your realistic launch deadline — and which assets will be ready by then
- The single person with final sign-off authority, named explicitly
- Your budget range
- Your MVP defined: what is the minimum version you're willing to launch?
The hard questions
- Have you resisted adding features because one specific customer asked for them?
- Are you launching to learn, or waiting until it's perfect?
- Does the decision-maker know what's in this brief and agree with it?
A Final Note
Most brief mistakes aren't careless. They come from not knowing what developers actually need — and from the very human instinct to want things to be perfect, to keep every customer happy, and to avoid committing to a number before you know what you're getting.
A good developer will help you work through a brief even if it's incomplete. But the more clarity you bring upfront, the more accurate your quote, the smoother your project, and the more likely you are to get a website that actually does what your business needs.
At RiaLab, we walk every new client through a structured briefing process before a single line of code is written. If you're planning a website, e-commerce store, or web app in Melbourne, get in touch →
Related Articles: