How to brief a maritime web design agency and not waste six months

Maritime web design projects that drift, overrun or end in disappointment almost always trace back to a weak brief. The marketing director writes two pages, says “make it modern and on-brand”, invites three agencies to quote and picks the cheapest. Six months later wonders why the new site is just the old site with rounder buttons.

A good brief is the single most valuable piece of writing in a maritime web project. It’s worth two weeks of work, even though it’s almost always given two days.

What a good brief contains

1. Context that the agency couldn’t infer

What kind of company you are, who you serve, where you sit in the market, who your real competitors are. Don’t assume the agency knows; even agencies experienced in maritime won’t know your particular niche unless you tell them. A bunkering broker, a shipyard, an offshore wind cable layer and a class society are all “maritime” but their websites have almost nothing in common.

Useful: “We’re an independent technical ship manager, 80 vessels under management, 60% tanker tonnage, headquartered in Limassol, with offices in Singapore and Hamburg. We compete with Anglo-Eastern, Bernhard Schulte, V.Group on full-service mandates, and with smaller specialists like InterOcean and Wallem on Greek-owned tonnage. Our buyer is typically a fleet director at a 20 to 60 vessel owner, mid-market, often Greek or Cyprus-domiciled.”

Not useful: “We provide global maritime services.”

2. The specific commercial problem the new site is meant to solve

Not “we want a refresh”. The actual commercial problem. Examples:

• “Inbound enquiries are too few and too unqualified. Sales spend their time on small-fleet leads while we’re trying to win mid-market mandates.”
• “We’re losing on procurement reviews. The technical sponsor likes us; procurement comes back with concerns about credibility, financial transparency and integration capabilities.”
• “Our tanker capability is 60% of revenue but the site reads as bulker-led. We need a rebalanced presentation.”
• “We’re entering the Asian market and need a credible regional presentation that supports the BD team’s outreach.”

Each of these implies a different brief, a different design priority and a different content strategy. Without it, the agency is guessing.

3. Audience and journey hypotheses

Who you think the site is for, what they’re trying to do and where you think the friction is. Not just “fleet directors and superintendents” but the actual journeys:

• A fleet director in Greece evaluating a switch from incumbent technical manager.
• A procurement lead at a major operator running a vendor due diligence.
• A chartering broker checking your fleet availability for a fixture.
• A potential graduate hire researching whether to apply.

Hypotheses, not certainties. The agency can validate or refute through user research; the value is starting from a position rather than a vacuum.

4. Content posture

What content you have, what content you need, what’s in scope for the build and what isn’t. A surprising number of maritime redesigns end up with a half-built site because content production was assumed and never resourced. Be explicit:

• Existing case studies (count, quality, refresh required).
• Service pages (count, current state, rewrite required).
• Fleet data (source, format, integration required).
• Multilingual scope.
• News and insights backlog.
• Photography assets (existing library, new commissions required).

5. Constraints that aren’t preferences

Hard constraints, separated from soft preferences. Examples:

• Hard: “Must integrate with our HubSpot instance for all forms.”
• Hard: “Must support Greek and English with a clear path to add Mandarin in 2027.”
• Hard: “Hosting must be EU-resident for data protection reasons.”
• Soft: “Brand-aligned with our recent identity refresh, but with willingness to evolve digital expression.”
• Soft: “Preference for navy and white as primary palette, but open to design exploration.”

The agency needs to know which side each item is on. Treating soft preferences as hard constraints is a common cause of wrong-shaped pitches.

6. Budget posture

Not exact figures, not “we don’t have a budget”, but a working range. “We’re scoping for a build in the £80K to £140K range, with appetite to flex up if a strong case is made for additional capability.” This lets agencies pitch the right shape of solution. Without it, you’ll get pitches at every price point and waste your own and theirs evaluating mismatched shapes.

7. Timeline and decision dates

When you want to launch, why that date, who’s involved in approvals, what the decision-making cadence is. A maritime corporate redesign typically takes 14 to 22 weeks from contract; backwards-plan from your launch date.

If your decision committee has more than four people, be honest about it. Agencies have learned to discount briefs that say “the marketing director is the decision maker” when actually the CEO, CCO and chairman all need to weigh in.

8. Success criteria

What does success look like in 12 months? Be specific:

• “Inbound qualified enquiries up 30% by Q4.”
• “Zero procurement-review failures attributable to digital presentation.”
• “Three named-tier client logos on the home page that aren’t there now.”
• “Average time-on-site for fleet director persona above 4 minutes.”

Specific success criteria steer design decisions throughout the project. Without them, the project optimises for what’s easy to demo at launch.

What to leave out of the brief

Detailed page layouts and wireframes. That’s the agency’s job. Saying “the homepage should have a hero, a services grid, three case studies and a CTA” pre-decides answers the agency should be giving.

A specific design aesthetic copied from another site. “Make it look like Maersk’s site” is shorthand for “I haven’t thought about this”. The right aesthetic depends on your audience, your brand and your positioning, not Maersk’s.

Every feature you’ve ever wished for. A feature wishlist with 40 items signals an unscoped project. Prioritise to the 10 that actually matter.

How agencies read briefs

Three things a serious agency looks for first:

1. Is this commercially serious or vanity? A brief focused on sales pipeline, procurement scrutiny or regional expansion reads commercially serious. A brief focused on “fresh modern feel” doesn’t.

2. Is the buyer real or imagined? A brief with named real personas and journey hypotheses signals a marketing team that’s actually researched its audience.

3. Is the budget honest or padded? A brief with a budget range signals a real project. A brief with no budget signals a procurement exercise where price will be the only deciding factor.

A good brief saves three months of misalignment, two failed pitch rounds and one half-built site. It’s the cheapest, most valuable piece of work in the entire project, and almost nobody invests properly in it.

If you’re commissioning a maritime web build in the next year, write the brief twice. The second draft, written after a week of letting the first one sit, is always better. The agency reading it will treat you better, scope it better and pitch you better. The site that comes out the other end will be the one you actually wanted.