What to Include in an E-Commerce Brief Your Agency Won't Misread

Most e-commerce projects that go over budget don't fail because the agency is bad. They fail because the brief was vague. The founder had a clear vision in their head, the agency had a different one in theirs, and neither realised until wireframes were already approved.

A good brief isn't a 30-page document. It's a focused document that tells an agency exactly what you're selling, who you're selling to, what success looks like, and where the constraints are. Here's how to write one that gets you accurate quotes and a build that actually matches your business.

Start With Business Context, Not Features

Agencies see hundreds of feature requests. What they rarely get is real business context. Lead with this, because it changes every technical recommendation downstream.

What to include

• What you sell and your average order value. Selling $15 candles is a different build from selling $4,000 custom furniture.
• Order volume expectations. 50 orders a month vs. 5,000 orders a month means different platforms, hosting, and checkout flows.
• Where customers come from. Paid social, organic search, wholesale referrals, or in-store QR codes all imply different landing experiences.
• Your operational reality. Are you shipping from your garage or a 3PL? Do you do made-to-order? Pre-orders? Subscriptions?
• Margin sensitivity. A 70% margin DTC brand can afford Shopify Plus. A 15% margin reseller probably can't.

One paragraph on each of these saves the agency three discovery calls.

Define the Product Catalogue Precisely

This is where briefs collapse most often. "We sell clothing" tells an agency nothing. They need the structure.

Catalogue questions to answer

1. How many SKUs at launch, and how many in 12 months?
2. How many variants per product (size, colour, material)?
3. Do products have shared attributes, or is every product unique?
4. Are there bundles, configurable products, or subscription versions?
5. How are products grouped — collections, categories, tags, filters?
6. Do you need product personalisation (engraving, custom text, uploads)?

If you sell something like nutritional supplements with flavour, size, and subscription frequency options, that's three variant axes and a subscription engine. That's a very different quote from a single-SKU candle.

Be Specific About the Checkout and Payments

Checkout is where most custom work and most compliance risk lives. Spell it out.

• Payment methods: Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, Klarna, Afterpay, crypto, manual bank transfer, purchase orders for B2B.
• Currencies and regions: Selling in USD only, or multi-currency with geo-detection?
• Tax handling: Do you need automated sales tax (TaxJar, Avalara), VAT for EU, or simple flat tax?
• Shipping logic: Flat rate, weight-based, real-time carrier rates, free shipping thresholds, local pickup?
• Guest checkout vs. forced accounts.
• Account features: Order history, reorder, saved addresses, wishlist, loyalty points?

Specify Integrations Up Front

Every integration is hours of work. Listing them in the brief prevents "that wasn't in scope" arguments later. Tell the agency exactly which tools you already use or plan to use.

Common integrations to flag

• Email and SMS marketing (Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Postscript)
• Inventory or ERP (NetSuite, Cin7, Linnworks)
• Accounting (QuickBooks, Xero)
• Shipping and fulfilment (ShipStation, ShipBob, Royal Mail, Sendcloud)
• Reviews (Yotpo, Judge.me, Trustpilot)
• Analytics (GA4, Meta Pixel, TikTok Pixel, server-side tracking)
• Customer support (Gorgias, Zendesk, Intercom)
• CRM or wholesale portals

If you're not sure which tool to use, say so. A good agency will recommend based on your stack, not just default to whatever they've integrated before.

Show Visual References — Then Explain Them

Don't just send three Pinterest boards. Send specific competitor sites and tell the agency why you picked them.

Good: "I like how Allbirds presents product variants — the colour swatches are large and the image updates instantly. I don't like their navigation, it feels cluttered."

Bad: "Make it look like Allbirds."

Pick 3–5 references. For each, note one specific element you want to borrow and one you want to avoid. This gives designers a vocabulary to work with rather than guessing.

State Your Content Reality

Agencies assume content is ready. It almost never is. Tell them honestly:

• Do you have professional product photography, or phone shots?
• Are product descriptions written, or do they need to be?
• Do you have lifestyle imagery for the homepage and category pages?
• Is there brand identity (logo, fonts, colour palette), or does that need building?

If content isn't ready, the agency can either price it in, recommend a partner, or build a flexible CMS so you can add it later. They can't do any of those if you don't tell them.

Define Success in Numbers

Vague goals produce vague websites. Replace "we want it to convert well" with something measurable.

• Target conversion rate (industry average for your niche is a fine starting point)
• Target page load time (under 2.5 seconds for Largest Contentful Paint is a reasonable bar)
• Mobile traffic percentage (often 70%+ for DTC — design priorities should reflect this)
• Launch date and the business reason behind it (a trade show, a product drop, a seasonal window)

Set the Budget Honestly

Founders often hide budget thinking it'll get them a better deal. It does the opposite — it wastes everyone's time on proposals that don't fit. Share a range. Even "$8,000–$15,000" or "$25,000–$50,000" lets the agency propose the right scope.

If you genuinely don't know what e-commerce builds cost, ask for a rough order of magnitude before the full brief. A reputable agency like Axoxweb will tell you whether your wishlist is a $5,000 project or a $50,000 one in a 20-minute call.

A Sample Brief Structure You Can Copy

1. Business summary — one paragraph on what you sell and to whom
2. Goals and KPIs — what success looks like in numbers
3. Product catalogue — SKU count, variants, special product types
4. Checkout and payments — methods, currencies, tax, shipping
5. Required integrations — list with current tools
6. Design direction — references with annotations
7. Content status — what's ready, what isn't
8. Technical preferences or constraints — platform if decided, hosting, must-have plugins
9. Timeline — launch date and why
10. Budget range — honest numbers

Keep it to 4–6 pages. Anything longer and the important details get buried. Anything shorter and you'll spend the discovery phase filling in gaps.

Ready to Build?

If you've got a brief drafted — or even just rough notes — and want a partner who'll ask the right follow-up questions before quoting, talk to the team at axoxweb.com. We build fast, modern e-commerce sites for founders who care about doing it properly the first time.