'We need a new website' almost never means the website is the problem. It usually means something further upstream has stopped making sense: the positioning drifted, the product changed, a competitor arrived and the difference between you got harder to explain. The website is simply the most visible thing to point at.
If you take that brief literally you will build a competent site that solves nothing, and in eighteen months the same client will be back asking for another new website.
Ask what changed
My first question in any kickoff is some version of: what happened recently that made this feel urgent? Nobody commissions a rebuild on a quiet Tuesday for no reason. There is always an event: a lost pitch, a funding round, a bad quarter, a departure.
That event tells you what the work has to fix, which is almost always a different thing from what the brief describes.
Write the one page before anything else
Every project I run has a single page that gets signed off before design or code starts. Who this is for, what we are claiming, what we are refusing to build, and what has to be true in twelve months for this to have worked.
It is a boring document and it saves entire months. When a stakeholder pushes an opinion in week nine, the page is the referee. Without it, the loudest person in the room is the referee.
Say the uncomfortable thing early
If I think the brief is wrong I say so in the first meeting, then I do the work anyway if the client still wants it, with the disagreement written down. That combination matters. Raising it late looks like an excuse; raising it early and proceeding looks like a professional who is on your side.
Roughly a third of the time the client already suspected it and was waiting for someone external to say it out loud.
If you take four things away
- Find the event that triggered the brief; it defines the real problem
- Get one page of scope signed before any design or code happens
- Raise disagreements early and in writing, then proceed professionally
- The stated deliverable is rarely the actual deliverable
Get the next one when it lands.
Questions about anything in this piece? Email me directly.
Next: Designing an MVP you won't have to throw away
