Writing a good brief
The brief is the description you write on the Describe it step, and it is the main thing Briks builds from. A few more sentences here save several changes later. This page covers what to include, what to leave out, and six briefs rewritten from vague to useful.
What a good brief covers
Under the box, the studio's checklist asks for who it is for and where, what it offers, how it should feel, and the pages or features it needs. In practice, a brief that builds well answers these:
- Who is the business? Its name, what it does and where it is.
- Who is it for? Runners with knee pain, couples planning a wedding, bookkeepers at small firms.
- Which pages? Name them if you know them: Home, Treatments, Prices, About, Contact. A first build makes up to 10, the home page included.
- What should visitors do? Call, send an enquiry, request a booking, join a waitlist. Say which one matters most.
- What are the facts? Opening hours, prices, areas you cover, team names, a phone number, an address.
- How should it feel? "Calm and plain, no jokes" or "warm and a bit cheeky". Colours you already use, or ones to avoid.
- What do you never want? No stock photos of handshakes, no prices on the site, no dark backgrounds.
What you can leave to Briks
You don't need to describe the layout, the fonts, the spacing or the order of sections. Briks plans those for your kind of business, or takes them from a site you like. You don't need to write each section's words either: give the facts and the tone, and Briks writes the copy. Gaps are caught by the questions before building.
Things that are already fixed belong on the Your brand step rather than in the brief: an exact accent colour, a typeface, light or dark. Those settings win over everything else, including any site you like.
How long it should be
The box needs at least ten characters and takes up to 25,000. Most briefs that build well are between 80 and 250 words: long enough to hold the facts, short enough not to contradict themselves. When a brief already names the pages, the main action and the facts, the only question before building is usually which pages to tick, with yours already ticked.
A brief that names no business at all, such as Make me a modern website, gets one question before anything else: what the business does, who it is for and where it is. Answering it in a sentence or two is the quickest way to a site that is about you.
Writing it in five passes
Start with who and where
Where: Describe it
One sentence with the business's name, what it does and where:
Stillwater Yoga, a small studio in Brighton.Add the pages and the main action
Where: Describe it
List the pages, then say what a visitor should do first: call, send an enquiry, request a booking.
Paste the facts
Where: Describe it
Hours, prices, areas, names. Lists are fine, written the way you would jot them on a notepad.
Say how it should feel
Where: Describe it
The tone in a few words, and any colours to use or avoid.
Read it once for clashes
Where: Describe it
Check nothing contradicts itself, then press Next. If you spoke the brief, tidy it first.
Pictures and your logo
The Describe it box takes words only. Pictures reach your site in three ways:
- Screenshots on Show what you like guide the look. Briks reads them for layout, spacing and colour, but doesn't put them on your site.
- Your own photos go in after the first build. In the studio's box, press Attach pictures (up to six JPEG, PNG or WebP files, each under 12 MB), switch each one from Reference to On the site, and say where it goes. Add from your media does the same with something already in your media library.
- Everything else follows the Pictures step: taken from the studio's library and cut to size, or drawn new. See Pictures.
Your logo is uploaded once the project exists. Open the project's Settings tab, which opens on General, and under Name and marks press Upload beside Logo. It replaces the drawn mark in the header and the footer, and a PNG or WebP on a transparent background reads best. Press Save under Name and marks. On a site that is already published, saving publishes it again with your logo, holding no credits.
In the brief itself, describe the pictures you want in words: "photographs of calm treatment rooms, no illustrations".
Six briefs, before and after
Each pair is one business: a brief people often type, then one that gives Briks what it needs.
Website for my physio clinic. Modern and professional.
Missing: where the clinic is, who it treats, the pages, the prices, how people book and every real fact.
Northside Physio, a physiotherapy clinic in Didsbury, Manchester, open since 2014. We treat runners, desk workers with back and neck pain, and people recovering from knee and hip surgery. Pages: Home, Treatments, Prices, Team, Contact. First assessment £65, follow-up £50, sports massage £45. Open Monday to Friday 8:00 to 20:00, Saturday 9:00 to 13:00. The main action is requesting an appointment through a form; also show the phone number, 0161 496 0123. Team: Priya Shah and Tom Ellis, chartered physiotherapists. Calm and reassuring. White and soft green.
With pages, prices, hours and the main action given, the questions are likely to stop at the pages, these five already ticked.
Landing page for our new app launch. Make it look like a startup.
Missing: what the product does, who it is for, what a visitor should do and the launch facts.
A one-page landing page for Ledgerline, software that matches bank transactions to invoices for bookkeepers at small accounting firms. Launching on 3 March. The main action is joining the waitlist with an email address. Sections: what it does, three problems it solves, how it works in three steps, a picture of the main screen, pricing from £19 per user a month, common questions, and the waitlist form. Confident and direct, no hype words. Dark navy and white with one bright accent.
One page is asked for, so one page is planned, with the waitlist as its main action.
Portfolio site for my photography. Show my best photos.
Missing: the kind of photography, the area, and how people get in touch.
Portfolio for Ana Ribeiro, a wedding photographer in Bristol covering the South West, who also travels for destination weddings. Relaxed, documentary style, mostly natural light. Pages: Home, Weddings, Elopements, About, Prices, Contact. Collections from £1,450 for six hours and £2,300 for a full day. The main action is an enquiry form asking for the date, the venue and the number of guests. Quiet and editorial, plenty of white space, a serif for headings. I'll add my own photos after the first build.
Style, area, prices and the form's fields are given, and the real photos follow the first build, which is how your own pictures go in.
Yoga studio website with online booking and payments for classes.
It says nothing about the studio: no classes, times or prices, and nothing about what people pay for or whether a place is confirmed.
Site for Stillwater Yoga, a small studio in Brighton. Pages: Home, Timetable, Classes, Teachers, Prices, Contact. Monday and Wednesday 18:30 beginners, Tuesday 10:00 pregnancy yoga, Saturday 9:00 slow flow. Drop in £12, ten classes £100, paid at the studio. Visitors request a place with a form giving their name, email, the class and the date, and we confirm by email ourselves. Gentle and welcoming, earthy colours.
Classes, times, prices and the form's fields are all given, and it says how people pay. To take payment online instead, connect your own processor under Settings, Payments and say so in the brief.
An app to manage our deliveries.
Missing: who uses it, what a delivery record holds and what people do with it.
An internal tool for Harbour Café's two cafés to log stock deliveries. Staff record each delivery: date, supplier, café (Quay Street or Market Row), items, quantity, cost and who received it. A list of deliveries with search and filters by supplier, café and week, and a screen showing spend per supplier this month. About eight staff use it, mostly on a phone in the back room, so big buttons and short forms. Plain and practical.
It names every field a record holds and every screen, so Briks can set up the records properly on the first build.
Sales dashboard with charts.
Missing: whose sales, which numbers, over what period and who reads it.
A sales dashboard for Fernway Furniture's team of six. It tracks deals: company, contact, value, stage (lead, quote sent, negotiating, won, lost), owner and expected close date. Show pipeline value by stage, deals won this month against a £60,000 target, the ten biggest open deals, and deals won by each salesperson over the last six months. The team adds and updates deals in a table with search and filters. Clear and calm, no decoration.
A dashboard skips the questions, so the brief carries everything: each record's fields and each number on the screen.
Common mistakes
Too vague
"A modern website for my business" could be anything. The questions before building help, but they can't recover facts only you know: your prices, your hours, your team.
Contradictions
"Minimal and quiet" in one sentence and "lots of movement and bold colours" in the next leaves Briks to pick one. So does "no prices" followed by a price list. Anything set on Your brand wins over the brief, so keep the two in step.
Asking for what Briks can't do yet
Briks doesn't build mobile apps yet. Memberships that renew monthly or yearly are built in, through your own Stripe, Paddle, Polar or Lemon Squeezy account. Shipping for physical goods it does build when you ask: say what you need in the brief, such as a shop that posts orders, and Briks builds it into the site with your own payment account. For anything it can't do yet, ask for what works today: member accounts, an enquiry form, a booking request form, a phone number to tap, or a button that links to the service where you already sell.
Names you never gave
A row of client logos, partners or press mentions only shows names you give in the brief. If you want one, list the names.
Addresses typed into the brief
A site you like goes on the Show what you like step, which is where Briks visits and reads it. See Build from a site you like.
Keys and passwords
Never paste a key, a token or a password into the brief. Briks cuts it out before the brief is kept and tells you to add it in Secrets instead. If the site should work with a service of yours, such as a mailing list, write Add new subscribers to our mailing list and name the service. With Ask about what is unclear before building on, as it starts, Briks then asks before building whether to build that part now and take the key once the site is live, or to leave it out for now.