A good web project starts with what the website needs to enable, not with a colour palette. Write down its main business goals and the actions visitors should complete, such as sending an enquiry, booking or finding information.

Next, describe the audience and its needs. Conversations with sales, support and users can reveal questions that existing content fails to answer. Different visitors may need different routes to a goal, rather than one journey built for an imaginary average user.

Create an inventory of available copy, photographs, documents and data. Assign an owner, language and preparation deadline to each item. Design will then have a realistic content basis, while the team can identify missing material early instead of discovering it before launch.

Agree on functional scope before detailed visual work. Separate first-release essentials from later improvements. Forms, search, CMS features and integrations need a clear description of how they behave, not just a name on a wish list or a screenshot to imitate.

Include constraints in the brief: budget, time, existing technology and editorial capacity. Establish who approves content and who makes final decisions. Without that agreement, feedback from different stakeholders can pull the project in conflicting directions.

Before design begins, check whether the team can explain the purpose of every main page. A concise brief, initial structure and a few key user scenarios provide a focused starting point. Visual proposals can then solve an understood problem instead of trying to discover it through layout choices.