Planning a new website? Start with the decisions that matter

Your website should make the next decision easier

You know the website needs work, but deciding what to change is less straightforward. Perhaps your business has moved on while the pages still describe an older offer. Perhaps visitors ask questions the website should already answer. Before commissioning a new design, identify the business problem you want the project to address. That gives you and your agency something more useful to discuss than whether a page feels modern.

Imagine a growing consultancy that offers three distinct services but presents them as one broad promise. The issue may be clarity rather than a lack of pages. A better starting question is: can a prospective client recognize their situation, find the appropriate service, and understand how to begin? This is an illustrative scenario, not a claim about a client result.

Choose a primary audience and action

List the people who use the website and the reason each person arrives. A prospective customer, a returning client, and a potential recruit do not need the same journey. Choose the audience that matters most to the current project, then describe what that person needs to understand before taking action.

Keep the primary action concrete: ask about a service, request a conversation, or explore relevant work. Supporting actions can still exist. The aim is to give the page a clear hierarchy so that visitors are not asked to make five equally prominent decisions at once.

Separate essential scope from attractive extras

Build a first-release list around the journeys you actually need. Service pages, useful project examples, contact information and a manageable editing system may matter more than a complicated interactive feature. If a feature depends on content or an integration you do not yet have, record that dependency before treating it as a launch requirement.

Ask what each proposed feature contributes. Who will use it? What must it connect to? Who maintains it? A clear answer helps you compare proposals on their substance. It also makes it easier to discuss which work belongs in the first release and which could follow later.

Treat content and editing as part of the build

Gather your service descriptions, approved imagery, examples of work and common customer questions before layout decisions become fixed. Where content is missing, agree who will create it and when. A beautiful page still needs something specific to say.

Think about the people who will edit the finished website. They may need to replace images, publish articles, update a service or change a team member’s details. Our website and web app service brings those everyday responsibilities into the same conversation as design and development.

Bring this to your first conversation

• Your main business priority for the website
• The audience you most want to help
• The questions visitors need answered
• Essential pages, features and integrations
• Content you already have and content still needed
• Who will approve the work and maintain the site

You do not need a perfect specification to start. A short, honest outline is enough to expose the important questions. If customer discovery is part of the challenge, read our guide to planning content around customer questions.

Work toward a brief you can act on

A useful brief is a shared basis for decisions, not a document that pretends every answer is known. It should help the team understand what matters, identify unresolved questions, and keep choices connected to the purpose of the website. As the work develops, revisit the brief when scope or priorities change.

If you have a website that no longer reflects your business, tell us what needs to change. Share the current URL, your main concern and what a useful next step would look like. We can start with those details and work through the questions together.