The brief that gets you a better quotation
You do not need a specification. You need to answer six things, and most briefs answer none of them.
A vague brief does not get you a cheap quotation. It gets you an expensive one, because the person quoting has to price the risk of everything you did not say. You can remove most of that risk in a few paragraphs, and you do not need to know anything technical to do it.
Six things worth writing down
- What has to be different afterwards. Not "a modern website" — something you could actually check. More enquiries from a particular kind of customer. Staff no longer re-typing orders. A catalogue your sales team can send a link to.
- Who it is for, specifically. "Everyone" is the most expensive audience there is. One sentence describing the person you most want to reach will change several design decisions.
- What already exists. A current site, a logo, photography, product data, a spreadsheet that runs everything. Say what condition it is in, honestly. Nobody is judging the spreadsheet.
- What has to be saved or connected. Enquiries, accounts, payments, stock, another system. This is the single biggest driver of cost, so it is the most useful thing you can be clear about.
- When, and why then. A trade show, a funding round, a season. A date with a reason attached gets planned around; a date without one usually slips.
- Roughly what you are prepared to spend. This is not a trap. It is the difference between being offered something appropriate and being offered something irrelevant twice.
On budget, since it is the awkward one
The worry is that naming a number means the price expands to meet it. The realistic alternative is worse: several rounds of proposals aimed at the wrong scale, and weeks lost. A range is enough. It lets the conversation be about what is achievable within it, which is the conversation you actually wanted.
What you do not need
You do not need a page-by-page structure, a technology preference, or a design direction. Those are the parts you are hiring for. Arriving with them fixed usually removes the options that would have served you better. Bring the problem; the shape is our job.