There’s an email I genuinely love receiving.

It comes through after someone fills out my enquiry form. It tells me a little about the brand, what they’re selling, who it’s for, and what they’re hoping a new website will actually do for the business. There’s enough there for me to get a feel for the project and think… yes, I’d love to connect with this founder!

And then there’s the other kind.

“Hi, I saw your work and I need a website for my business. It needs to have the following”: and then a list. Pages, copy, titles, functionality requirements. Must be mobile friendly. Must have SEO. Must have email flow, reviews integration, Google ranking, fast loading speed. Can you let me know your timeline and pricing please.

I’ve been building websites for six years and those two types of enquiries produce very different outcomes, because one tells me what you want built and the other tells me what you actually need.

The brief that skips the most important part

When someone sends me a detailed specification list, the intention is usually good. They’ve done their research, they know the terminology, they want to make sure nothing gets missed.

But here’s the thing, when you list “must be mobile friendly” and “must have SEO” in a brief to a competent web designer, you’re describing the absolute baseline of what any professional website should be. You’re not telling me anything that changes how I approach your project. Every website I build is mobile optimised. Every website I build has SEO foundations. These aren’t features I add when reminded. They’re part of how I work.

So when a brief leads with technical requirements, it tells me what the client has researched. It doesn’t tell me what the client actually needs. And those two things are rarely the same.

What a detailed ‘to-do’ list can’t tell me

It can’t tell me that people are landing on your product page and leaving without buying, and you don’t know why.

Or that you’ve been pitching to stockists and the feedback keeps coming back vague, because deep down you suspect your website isn’t backing up what you’re saying in the room.

Or that you launched a new product three months ago, but it’s barely selling.

Or that a stranger landing on your site for the first time has no idea what your product does.

These are the problems that produce a better website, because they tell me what the website actually needs to solve. Every layout decision, every section, every piece of copy gets shaped by understanding the real problem.

The difference between briefing a designer and directing one

Briefing a designer means sharing your goals, your situation, and your challenges; and then trusting the designer’s expertise to translate that into a website that addresses them.

Directing a designer means telling them exactly what to build and expecting them to execute it accurately.

Both can produce a website. But only one produces a better one.

When a client comes to me with a clear picture of where their brand is heading, i.e. they want to pitch to retail buyers, they’re preparing for funding, they’re relaunching after a rebrand and need the site to finally match the level they’re operating at, I can build something that genuinely supports that.

When a client comes to me with a list of pages and functionality requirements, I can build what’s on the list. But a list doesn’t tell me whether the homepage should lead with the brand story or the product. It doesn’t tell me how much educational content a new customer needs before they’re ready to buy. It doesn’t tell me whether the real problem is the design, the structure, or something else entirely.

What I actually want to know

It’s not what pages you need. Or which apps you want installed.

It’s, what is your website costing you right now? What opportunities are you missing because of it? What does a new customer experience when they arrive on your site without any prior context, and is that experience doing enough to make them stay, understand, and buy?

Those answers are what produce a website worth investing in, because they give me what I need to actually solve the problem rather than just deliver a brief.

My enquiry form is designed around exactly this. By what you need to fix and what you’re hoping to achieve. If you’ve been sitting on a brief wondering whether to send it, consider this your invitation to put the brief down and tell me what’s actually going on instead.

That’s where the better website starts.

JAL Studios builds custom Shopify and Showit websites for scaling brands who know their website isn’t working as hard as it should. The enquiry form is here, so tell me what’s going on, not what you want built.