This free B2B website brief template has seven sections you can copy, download or print, with no form to fill in. Five follow the steps of ORRJO’s Foundation website build: audit, architecture, copy, build and 30 days of support. It also carries eight SEO and AEO requirements, each sourced to Google, OpenAI, Perplexity or Anthropic.
A brief does two jobs. It gets every agency quoting for the same site, so you can compare proposals line by line, and it becomes the list you check the finished site against before launch. The structure comes from how ORRJO scopes its own builds, set out on our B2B websites page, but the template works with any agency.
What should a B2B website brief include?
Seven sections: the basics of the project, one section for each of the five steps of the build, and what you want back from each agency. The template below is the whole thing. Copy it into Word or Google Docs, download it as a text file, or print it.
B2B website brief
Fill in what you know. Mark anything you cannot answer yet as an open question rather than guessing, and attach exports and documents instead of retyping them.
1. The basics
- Company name and website address:
- What you sell, in one sentence a buyer would understand:
- Who buys it: job titles, company size, sectors and countries:
- Who else is involved in the buying decision:
- Why now: what has changed that makes the current site a problem:
- The main result the new site must deliver, and the number you will judge it by:
- Budget: a fixed figure or a range, and what it must cover (design, copy, build, hosting, licences, support after launch):
- Dates: proposals due, decision date, launch date, and any fixed event behind the launch date:
- Who signs off the brief, the copy and the launch, and who the agency works with day to day:
2. Audit: what the current site does today Step 01
- Current platform, hosting, and who maintains the site today:
- What ranks and what doesn’t: top pages by organic clicks and the searches behind them (Search Console export attached):
- What AI engines say when buyers ask about your category: the questions you asked, the engines, the date, and whether you were named:
- Which pages do the selling and which leak: pages that lead to enquiries, and pages with traffic but no next step:
- Baseline before anything changes: enquiries, demo requests or other conversions from the site each month, with the date range:
- Full list of current URLs (attached), for the redirect map:
- Pages, URLs and forms to keep as they are unless the audit gives a reason to change them:
- Access the agency will need: analytics, Search Console, CMS, domain registrar, DNS and hosting:
3. Architecture: the pages and the path to a booked call Step 02
- Every page the new site needs, and the one job each page does:
- The questions buyers ask before they book a call, in the order they ask them, and the page that answers each one:
- The path from first visit to booked call: entry pages, the next step on each, and the form or booking link at the end:
- Pages to merge, retire or redirect, and where each old URL should go:
- Navigation and footer items:
- Anything gated (downloads, pricing, case studies), and why:
4. Copy: the words and the proof Step 03
- Who writes the copy: your team, the agency or a third party. If the agency, confirm it is in the price:
- Your positioning in one paragraph, and the words buyers use on your sales calls:
- Every claim you want on the site, with the evidence behind it and its date:
- Client names, logos, quotes and results you have written permission to use:
- Brand: attach the brand book the build must follow, or say that branding needs to come first:
- Tone of voice, and words to avoid:
- Headlines or pages where you want variants to test:
5. Build: platform, integrations and the checks before launch Step 04
- Platform: any you must use or must avoid, and why. Or ask each agency to recommend one and explain why:
- Who will edit the site after launch, and how often:
- Integrations, each written so it can be tested at launch (for example: every demo request creates a contact in our CRM and alerts the account owner):
- Forms and booking links, and where each submission goes:
- Performance target: Core Web Vitals within the “good” thresholds at the 75th percentile of page loads, on mobile and desktop:
- Accessibility target: WCAG 2.2, level AA:
- Analytics and tracking tools, and how consent will be handled under PECR:
- Hosting, security, backups, and who pays for each:
- SEO and AEO requirements (keep, edit or delete each line):
- Crawling allowed in robots.txt and by the CDN, firewall and host, for search crawlers and for the AI search crawlers OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot.
- AI training crawlers (Google-Extended, GPTBot, ClaudeBot) decided on separately, with the decision written down.
- Important content on the page as text, not only inside images, video or scripts.
- Structured data in JSON-LD that matches the visible text, validated before launch.
- A redirect map for every old URL: permanent (301 or 308) redirects straight to the final page, no mass redirects to the home page, kept for at least a year.
- Pages that answer the questions buyers ask, in the order they ask them, with the proof beside every claim.
- Search Console verified for the new site, the Search generative AI setting checked, and the Generative AI performance report read after launch.
- llms.txt optional: keep one only for systems that use it.
- Acceptance checks before launch: every agreed page complete, every form tested end to end, every redirect verified, the targets above met, and every claim, link and schema block checked:
6. Launch and support Step 05
- Analytics wired in and tested before launch, and what you need to see in the first month:
- CMS training: who needs it:
- Support after launch: how long it lasts, how requests are raised, and how fast they are resolved:
- Ownership at handover: domain, code, design files, content, accounts and data, and the format each is handed over in:
- Who checks Search Console after launch, and how often:
7. What you want back from each agency
- Proposal deadline and format:
- Price split into the one off build and any ongoing fees, with what is excluded:
- Timeline, with milestones and what the agency needs from you at each one:
- Written answers to these questions:
- Who will do the work: your own team, or freelancers and subcontractors?
- Do you audit the current site before you scope the build, and what does the audit cover?
- Who writes the copy, and is it in the price?
- Which platform will you build on, and why that one for us?
- Who owns the domain, code, design files, content and accounts at handover?
- What will you promise about rankings or AI mentions, and what will you measure instead?
- What checks run before anything goes live?
- What support do we get after launch, and how fast are requests resolved?
- Will you train our team on the CMS?
- Can you build inside our existing brand?
- How is the price built: what is one off, what is ongoing, and what is excluded?
- Which live B2B sites have you built, and what changed after launch?
Step 01, Audit: what do you need to know before you write the brief?
You need evidence of what the current site does today: what ranks and what doesn’t, what AI engines say when buyers ask about your category, and which pages do the selling and which leak. ORRJO’s audit reads the same three things before every build, and they fill section 2 of the template.
At ORRJO, a full audit of the current site and its SEO and AEO health comes first, so the brief is set by findings rather than assumptions. The build brief falls out of the evidence. If you write the brief yourself, work the same way: attach the Search Console export rather than describing it, write down the exact questions you put to the AI engines and the date you asked them, and record a baseline of enquiries from the site before anything changes, so there is something to compare against after launch.
If any pages or URLs will move, export the full list of current URLs now. Google’s guidance on site moves starts from that list: “Once you have the listing of old URLs, decide where each one should redirect to.” (Google). You will need it for the redirect map in step 04.
Step 02, Architecture: which pages does the new site need?
List every page, the one job each page does, and the route a stranger takes to a booked call. That is how ORRJO defines the architecture step: which pages exist, what job each one does, and how a stranger becomes a booked call.
Start from the buyer, not the org chart. Most B2B sites read like brochures: what we do, who we are, contact us. A site built as sales infrastructure answers the questions a buyer actually has, in the order they ask them, with the proof beside every claim. Write those questions into section 3 in order, and give each one a page or a section that answers it.
Then mark the end of the path on every page: the form, booking link or next page a buyer should reach. Every piece of outreach you send drives a quiet visit to your website, and the site either builds the case for a meeting or undermines it.
Step 03, Copy: who writes the words, and what proves them?
Say in the brief who writes the copy, so every agency prices the same job. At ORRJO the copy is part of every build: written block by block against the audit findings, with the proof beside every claim, and with headline variants where testing earns its keep.
Then list every claim you want on the site with the evidence behind it. A useful UK bar is rule 3.7 of the CAP Code: before publishing, marketers “must hold documentary evidence to prove claims that consumers are likely to regard as objective and that are capable of objective substantiation”. If you could not hand over the evidence for a number, leave it off the site, and use only the client names, logos and quotes you have written permission for.
If you have a brand book, attach it. ORRJO can build inside your existing brand: if you have a brand book, the build runs inside it. If you don’t, the branding work comes first, and the site becomes its first deployment.
Step 04, Build: what should the brief say about platform, integrations and checks?
Say what the site has to connect to, who will edit it after launch, and the checks it must pass before it goes live, and let the platform follow from those. ORRJO builds each B2B website on the platform the audit justifies: the right stack depends on what the site has to do, who maintains it after launch, and what you’re locked into today.
Write every integration so someone can test it on launch day. “CRM integration” cannot be tested. “Every demo request creates a contact in our CRM and alerts the account owner” can. Do the same for forms, booking links and anything else that sends data somewhere.
End the section with acceptance checks: every agreed page complete, every form tested end to end, every redirect verified, the performance and accessibility targets met, and structured data validated. ORRJO’s build step closes with a pre publish verification pass on every claim, link and schema block. The SEO and AEO requirements below belong in this section too.
Step 05, Support: what happens after launch, and who owns the site?
Write the handover into the brief: analytics wired in and tested, your team trained on the CMS, a fixed support period with a stated response time, and confirmation that you own the site. Every ORRJO Foundation build includes all four: analytics wired in, CMS training and 30 days of support after launch, with support requests typically resolved within 24 hours, and you own everything we ship.
Spell ownership out item by item: the domain, the code, the design files, the content, the accounts and the data, and the format each one is handed over in.
Then name who will check Search Console after launch, and how often. Google says sites appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode “are included in the overall search traffic in Search Console” (Google), and its Generative AI performance report “shows data about how your site performs in generative AI features on Google Search” (Google).
Which SEO and AEO requirements should every website brief include?
Eight, and none of them is a special trick for AI. Google says “There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary” (Google), and that optimising for generative AI search “is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO” (Google). OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic each document the crawler their AI search uses. The same eight lines sit in section 5 of the template.
| Write this into the brief | What the source says |
|---|---|
| 1. Crawl access. Search crawlers, and the AI search crawlers OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search), PerplexityBot (Perplexity) and Claude-SearchBot (Claude), are allowed in robots.txt and by the CDN, firewall and host. | Google lists “Ensuring that crawling is allowed in robots.txt, and by any CDN or hosting infrastructure” (Google). Sites opted out of OAI-SearchBot “will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though can still appear as navigational links” (OpenAI). Perplexity recommends allowing PerplexityBot “To ensure your site appears in search results” (Perplexity). Disabling Claude-SearchBot “may reduce your site’s visibility and accuracy in user search results” (Anthropic). |
| 2. AI training is a separate decision. Decide on the training crawlers Google-Extended, GPTBot and ClaudeBot on their own, and write the decision down. | Google-Extended “does not impact a site’s inclusion in Google Search nor is it used as a ranking signal in Google Search” (Google). Disallowing GPTBot “indicates a site’s content should not be used in training generative AI foundation models” (OpenAI). Restricting ClaudeBot “signals that the site’s future materials should be excluded from our AI model training datasets” (Anthropic). |
| 3. Content in text. Important content is on the page as text, not only inside images, video or scripts. | Google lists “Making sure that important content is available in textual form” (Google). |
| 4. Structured data that matches the page. JSON-LD that matches the visible text, validated before launch. Do not list FAQ rich results as a goal. | Google recommends JSON-LD “if your site’s setup allows it” (Google). For AI features, it lists “Making sure your structured data matches the visible text on the page”, and adds “There’s also no special schema.org structured data that you need to add” (Google). The FAQ rich result “will no longer appear in Google Search starting May 7, 2026” (Google). |
| 5. A redirect map. Every old URL mapped to the right new page with a permanent (301 or 308) redirect, straight to the final page, no mass redirects to the home page, kept for at least a year. | Google: “Once you have the listing of old URLs, decide where each one should redirect to”; use “HTTP permanent redirects if possible, such as 301 and 308”; “Don’t redirect many old URLs to one irrelevant single URL destination, such as the home page of the new site”; “Keep the redirects for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year” (Google). |
| 6. Content that answers buyers. Pages answer the questions buyers ask, in the order they ask them, with the proof beside every claim. | “Focus on developing unique, expert-led content that provides value beyond common knowledge.” Google adds: “There’s no requirement to break your content into tiny pieces for AI to better understand it.” (Google). |
| 7. Search Console after launch. Verify the new site in Search Console, check that Settings > Search generative AI is set to Include, and read the Generative AI performance report. | A site “must be included in Search generative AI features in Search Console to be eligible for display in generative AI features on Google Search” (Google). Include “is the default control for all properties”, and the control was rolled out to all websites worldwide as of 31 August 2026 (Google). The report “shows data about how your site performs in generative AI features on Google Search” (Google). |
| 8. llms.txt is optional. Keep an llms.txt file only if systems you care about use it, and do not expect it to change Google results. | llms.txt is “A proposal to standardise on using an /llms.txt file to provide information to help agents use a website” (llmstxt.org). For Google, these files “aren’t needed for Google Search (and won’t negatively or positively impact your visibility or rankings)” (Google), and it is “completely fine” to keep them for other services that use them (Google). |
Which other standards belong in the build section?
Three, each with a published benchmark you can hold an agency to.
- Performance. web.dev’s thresholds for a good user experience: Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less, and Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads, segmented across mobile and desktop (web.dev).
- Accessibility. Name WCAG 2.2, level AA, as the target. One in four people in the UK were disabled in 2024 to 2025, 16.7 million people, according to the Department for Work and Pensions’ Family Resources Survey.
- Analytics and consent. List every analytics and tracking tool the site will run, and how consent is handled under PECR. The ICO says the analytics exception is “not a broad exception that covers all types of analytics technologies or ways you can use them”, and that it “doesn’t apply to things like online advertising” (ICO).
What should you ask an agency before you sign?
Ask every agency on your shortlist the same twelve questions, in writing, so the answers sit side by side. They are in section 7 of the template. We publish this page, so the answers below are ORRJO’s: the publisher’s entry, taken from our own service pages. Hold us to them, and hold every other agency to theirs.
| Ask every agency | ORRJO’s answer (publisher’s entry) |
|---|---|
| 1. Who will do the work: your own team, or freelancers and subcontractors? | Brand & Content work is done by an in house studio: designers, copywriters and videographers on the ORRJO team. Nothing outsourced. |
| 2. Do you audit the current site before you scope the build, and what does the audit cover? | Yes. A full audit of the current site and its SEO and AEO health comes first, so the brief is set by findings rather than assumptions. It reads what ranks and what doesn’t, what AI engines say when buyers ask about your category, and which pages do the selling and which leak. |
| 3. Who writes the copy, and is it in the price? | ORRJO writes the website copy as part of every build. Copy is the core of the build, not an add on. |
| 4. Which platform will you build on, and why that one for us? | We build each B2B website on the platform the audit justifies. We name it, and why, in the build brief. |
| 5. Who owns the domain, code, design files, content and accounts at handover? | You own the website: you own everything we ship. |
| 6. What will you promise about rankings or AI mentions, and what will you measure instead? | Nobody can promise rankings, and we won’t. Rankings by a date and a guaranteed AI mention are the two things we won’t promise. What we build is the machinery: the audit that sets the brief, the schema and entity work, the answer blocks AI engines can lift, and the measurement to show whether it’s moving. |
| 7. What checks run before anything goes live? | A pre publish verification pass on every claim, link and schema block. |
| 8. What support do we get after launch, and how fast are requests resolved? | Every Foundation build includes 30 days of support after launch, with support requests typically resolved within 24 hours. |
| 9. Will you train our team on the CMS? | Yes. Training your team on the CMS is part of every Foundation build. |
| 10. Can you build inside our existing brand? | Yes. If you have a brand book, the build runs inside it. If you don’t, the branding work comes first, and the site becomes its first deployment. |
| 11. How is the price built: what is one off, what is ongoing, and what is excluded? | The Foundation is scoped per project after the audit, and ongoing work runs inside Brand & Content from £1,250 a month. |
| 12. Which live B2B sites have you built, and what changed after launch? | ORRJO built eight sites that are live now, listed on our B2B websites page. When myBasePay’s rebrand shipped with a new site, inbound website leads grew 300%+ in 8 weeks, with demand and lead generation running alongside. |
On question 6, keep Google’s own line in mind: “No third-party tool has access to our internal ranking or AI systems.” (Google). Ask any agency that offers a guarantee what it is based on.
For a shortlist to send the brief to, see our guide to the best B2B web design agencies in the UK.
What does ORRJO charge to build from this brief?
The Foundation, ORRJO’s website build, is scoped per project after the audit, and ongoing work runs inside Brand & Content from £1,250 a month. If you want evidence before you write the brief, start with the free Website Review or The Audit.
| Service | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Website Review | Free | A short written review, with three of the findings worked through properly. It comes back within 3 working days. Nothing to sign and no call required. |
| The Audit (AI visibility audit) | £750 plus VAT, one off | Report in 3 working days, walkthrough included. If you go on to bigger work within 90 days, the £750 comes off in full. |
| The Foundation (website build) | Scoped per project, after the audit | Audit, architecture, copy and build, with analytics wired in, your team trained on the CMS and 30 days of support after launch. |
| Brand & Content | From £1,250 a month | Ongoing work after launch. Ongoing SEO and AEO work is scoped into retainers from £1,250 a month. |
Full prices are on our pricing page. For what B2B websites cost across the UK market, see our guide to how much a B2B website costs in the UK. When myBasePay’s rebrand shipped with a new site, inbound website leads grew 300%+ in 8 weeks, with demand and lead generation running alongside: read the myBasePay case study.
Questions buyers ask about website briefs
Is this website brief template free to use?
Yes. The template is free and ungated: it sits on this page, with no form and no email address needed. Copy it into Word or Google Docs, download it as a text file, or print it, then send it to any agency you are talking to, not only ORRJO.
How long should a B2B website brief be?
Long enough that every agency can quote for the same job, and no longer. Fill in every field you can answer with evidence, mark the rest as open questions instead of guessing, and attach the audit findings, Search Console exports, URL list and brand book rather than retyping them into the brief.
Should a website brief include the budget?
Yes. Give a fixed figure or a range and say what it must cover: design, copy, build, hosting, licences and support after launch. Without it, agencies have to guess at the scope and their proposals are hard to compare. ORRJO's Foundation build is scoped per project after the audit, and ongoing work runs inside Brand & Content from £1,250 a month.
Do we need llms.txt or special schema to show up in AI search?
Not for Google. Google says you don't need new machine readable files or AI text files to appear in Google Search, including its generative AI features, because Google Search itself doesn't use them, and that there's no special schema.org markup you need to add. Keeping an llms.txt file for other services that use it is fine. Put crawl access, text content and Search Console checks in the brief instead.
Can an agency guarantee rankings or AI mentions?
Google says no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems, so ask any agency that offers a guarantee what it is based on. ORRJO's position: nobody can promise rankings, and we won't, and a guaranteed AI mention is the other thing we won't promise. Write the inputs into the brief instead, and ask each agency what it will measure after launch.
Who should own the website after launch?
You should, and the brief should say so item by item: the domain, code, design files, content, accounts and data, and the format each is handed over in. At ORRJO you own everything we ship, and every Foundation build includes CMS training for your team and 30 days of support after launch, with support requests typically resolved within 24 hours.
Should we get an audit before we write the brief?
If you cannot yet answer the audit section with evidence, yes. It asks what ranks and what doesn't, what AI engines say when buyers ask about your category, and which pages do the selling and which leak. ORRJO's free Website Review comes back within 3 working days with no call required, and The Audit is £750 plus VAT, walkthrough included.
What does ORRJO's Foundation website build include?
Five steps: a full audit of the current site and its SEO and AEO health, then the architecture, the copy and the build, with a pre publish verification pass on every claim, link and schema block, then analytics wired in, CMS training and 30 days of support after launch. Builds are scoped per project after the audit.
Sources
- Google Search Central, AI features and your website, last updated 10 December 2025. Checked 13 October 2026.
- Google Search Central, Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search, last updated 10 July 2026. Checked 13 October 2026.
- Google Search Central, Latest Google Search documentation updates, last updated 8 October 2026. Checked 13 October 2026.
- Google Search Central, Introduction to structured data markup in Google Search, last updated 10 December 2025. Checked 13 October 2026.
- Google Search Central, Site moves with URL changes, last updated 20 August 2026. Checked 13 October 2026.
- Google, Google’s common crawlers, last updated 14 July 2026. Checked 13 October 2026.
- Google Search Console Help, Search generative AI control. Checked 13 October 2026.
- Google Search Console Help, Generative AI performance report (Search). Checked 13 October 2026.
- OpenAI, Overview of OpenAI Crawlers. Checked 13 October 2026.
- Perplexity, Perplexity Crawlers. Checked 13 October 2026.
- Anthropic, Does Anthropic crawl data from the web, and how can site owners block the crawler?, Claude Help Center, dated 7 April 2026. Checked 13 October 2026.
- llmstxt.org, The /llms.txt file. Checked 13 October 2026.
- web.dev, Web Vitals, last updated 31 October 2024. Checked 13 October 2026.
- W3C, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2. Checked 13 October 2026.
- Department for Work and Pensions, Family Resources Survey: financial year 2024 to 2025, published 26 March 2026. Checked 13 October 2026.
- Information Commissioner’s Office, What are the exceptions?, guidance on the use of storage and access technologies, dated 29 April 2026. Checked 13 October 2026.
- Committee of Advertising Practice, The CAP Code, section 3: Misleading advertising, rule 3.7. Checked 13 October 2026.
ORRJO’s own process, positions and prices are quoted from our B2B websites, Brand & Content, SEO and AEO, audit and pricing pages.