Axel Amer
Founder at BlueNest agency
Home / Whitepapers / How to build the brief for Figma to WP projects
Many agency owners and directors know the power of brief, but due to high amount of tasks during the day – briefs are usually neglected – quick notes or just a Figma link
I wrote this guide to help digital agencies deliver better service to their clients by using power of clarity
This part should set expectations for both parties:
Include fixed price or budget range to get the most accurate quotes. You’ll hardly ever save any money when asking a contractor to just name the price in website development, because in most cases the full possible scope of work for any contract is higher than the budget for it.
Imagine a situation: you have a 5 000$ budget on website development and get quotes within 1 000$ and 15 000$ range. More likely you’ll ignore everything lower than 4 000$ and higher than 6 000$ for the job, because they either won’t meet your standards or the budget
Another important point – from my experience most briefs are bloated with stuff that require a lot of work but have low value for the end client or user. So when you specify the budget – you likely will get more accurate quotes in terms of scope of work.
Sometimes you may get even 2 quotes – with fully described scope of work that is higher than your budget and alternatives that match your budget but suggest to cut off some features or use alternative routes.
This is time when you won’t make any pressure on contractor and expect them to work on the Website, QA etc. you just need to get polished results by this date
This should have some buffer from the development deadline to make your agency implement final touches. Usually website is part of a big plan:
In order to hit the deadline without burnout – every contract needs some buffer.
You may get everything at one point, or get delivered with some parts of the job. Ex: Homepage – week 1,
Archive pages – week 2,
Single pages – week 3,
Inner pages – week 5,
QA – week 6-7
Launch – week 10
Getting paid on time is important for you and for your contractor. Align contractor payment terms with your payment terms with the client, but make sure the contractor doesn’t get penalized if the client has not paid your invoice. When work is done – it should be paid
Ex: SEO part, Content Part, Adding translations etc. – explain who may need to be plugged-in the project on later stages to prioritise development of certain functionalities but ensure no work will be lost
Most agencies don’t specify the selection of technologies and then deadlines needs to be moved because some things are built not as they expect from the start
WordPress, Headless WordPress, etc.
Any theme, Specific theme, Child theme to specific theme, your agencies custom theme, etc.
ACF templates, ACF Blocks, ACF Flexible content, Page Builder
If you prefer using certain field types or settings for certain situations – let contractor know
Ex: Using ACF Link is great for buttons, but am getting mad when somebody uses URL or URL + text, haha.
Another ex: Text field vs Wysiwig editor – let contractor know what do you prefer and when to make sure all copy will look great at the end
List out what kind of content should be edited globally, to make life of content team easier. These blocks will be edited in 1 place and content can be used as many time as you need.
Remember the last time you needed to add new amazing client logo on 150 pages on client’s site. Annoying and time consuming operation isn’t it? With global blocks it could be done in minutes
Common global blocks:
The bigger website – the more post types and taxonomies website might need. This is what makes it clear in terms of editing experience and good for SEO
If you’re not sure – let contractor know and you’ll define this together.
If you’re sure – better to make things correctly from the first try
This will help to see that some pages like search results, default text page, 404 etc, should have some designs as well and will make sure nothing is missing or require additional budget at the end of the project
Search functionality,
Filtering,
Recommended articles/ products
While it may be self-explanatory to you, as you spent hours on calls with team and clients, but contractor have no idea how this should work:
Examples
Search
Filtering
Probably the most underrated part, agencies usually just add – use as small amount of plugins as possible, but, let’s break this down
I divide plugins into 2 categories:
Functional and visual
Functional are
Visuals:
They should not be used usually and core difference from functional is that they add a lot of JS,CSS on the front-end and are replaced by custom code usually
So, take the list above and add a preferred plugin name. Add Yoast SEO or Rank Math, add WpRocket or Nitropack, etc.
Especially, if you have paid licenses.
List out what else is planned to be added to the website.
Do you have a styleguide for CSS, JS, Git commits?
Do you have a staging environment or should a contractor provide this?
Do you have your own git with CI/CD?
Do you have any brunch strcutture for the internal team to review changes?
Make it clear if website should be based on Figma designs or it will be checked with Perfect Pixel
What are your responsive expectations
How you’re going to test speed
How you’re going to test accessibility
Do you expect to involve somebody from the core team for QA or expect polished delivery from contractor
Who’s primary contact on your for these questions
I hope you found this helpful guide.
Find more interesting content about wordpress development for digital agencies on my youtube – https://www.youtube.com/@wp-talks
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