Write the brief before you look at a design

Most people start a website by looking at designs. That is backwards, and it is why so many sites look good for a week and say little. The look is the easy part. The facts are what the site is for.

In Geenius MVP a site starts with a brief: a short document of what the business is, what it offers, where it is, who it is for and what a visitor must be able to do. Everything written later, by you or by your own AI, is built on it.

What goes in#

Write the facts a stranger would need. The name and what you do, in a sentence. The place and the area you serve. Opening hours and how to reach you. The three or four services or products you actually offer. What you want a visitor to do: call, book, buy, ask. The languages the site should speak. And where each fact can be checked, such as your own pages or a register.

What stays out#

Anything you cannot source. A review nobody wrote, a claim of being the best, a price you are not sure of. If your AI writes the content, tell it to research from official sources and to write only what it can source. A site with fewer claims that are all true is better than a site that sounds bigger.

Why before the design#

When you draw ten designs far apart for the same brief, the words stay the same and the look changes. That is how you judge a design honestly: the same facts, ten ways. If the brief is thin, every design looks thin, and you will blame the design.

Languages#

A brief names the languages. A site can have several, and the content document tells you what is untranslated or empty, so a missing page is a to-do and not a surprise.

Keep it short#

A good brief fits on a page. It is not marketing copy. It is the fact sheet the marketing copy is built from, and the thing you check a claim against when somebody asks where a sentence came from.

Read about the brief and content or start with getting started.