A brief, put simply, is a conversation where you tell the designer what you want. The designer in turn needs to identify these requirements, extract and identify needs, wants and possibilities for a prospective website.

Let's take a case study. John is a small business owner, an SME (Small to Medium Sized Enterprise) and he wants a website. Great. Where do we start...?

John owns a small business calls Smith Shoes and serves a small local community. However, he wants a website because he feels he can grow his market and sell more shoes.

At this point a lot of web designers would be rubbing their hands because designing a shopping cart can actually be quite expensive (if hand coded). However, there are many off the shelf solutions available.

John also wants to promote a new line in keep dry treatments he's created from a recipe his Grandad gave him and he's modified.

Mmmm... I'm thinking. USP (Unique Selling Point) or in English "What does John do that his competition do not?"

The client generally won't be thinking about their "virtual" competition, where their competitors' website are in Google, what domain name (www.mydomain.com) or what keywords they might use. These however, along with geographical market, location of prospective customers and spoken languages are all really important.

Imagine your web designer presenting you with a website in Spanish when no-one in your business can answer the phonecalls generated or the e-mails received...? Oops...! But it happens.

So, in short we chat, define what you want, identify needs and suggest ideas that would work well with your business and help it grow.