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How to Brief a Shopify Designer: What to Prepare First

SHOPIFY DESIGN BUSINESS
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Ayo is the founder of Why Matters, a Shopify agency based in Brighton. With over 20 years of experience in ecommerce, digital marketing, and ROI-driven growth, he has helped hundreds of Shopify brands build, launch, and scale their online stores. Why Matters is a certified Shopify, Klaviyo, and Recharge partner.

September 17, 2026

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Key Takeaways

  • Brief the problem, not the appearance. A site can look dramatically better and perform worse.
  • Bring numbers. Conversion by device, average order value, add to basket rate and checkout completion tell a designer more than any mood board.
  • Record a baseline before anything changes, or the only available verdict after launch is that everybody thinks it feels better.
  • Across 265 Shopify stores we have audited, median conversion was 1.7%, and at that level half a percentage point is roughly 29% more conversions from the same traffic.
  • Our product page work typically finds around two percentage points of improvement available on badly designed pages and 0.5 to 1 on average to good ones.
  • Annotate your references. "We like how this store handles variant selection" is useful. "Make it look like this" is not.
  • Content delays projects more than design does, so agree who writes, who photographs and by when.
  • Name one decision maker. It is the single biggest predictor of a project that runs smoothly.

Quick Answer

Before briefing a Shopify designer, prepare five things: the commercial goal with your current numbers, a baseline snapshot of performance, your brand assets and annotated references, an honest status on content and photography, and your constraints, meaning the apps, integrations and functionality that cannot break. Add a budget range, a real deadline, your success measures and one named decision maker. That is a brief. Everything else, including theme choice and visual direction, is a decision the project should reach rather than start with.

Table of Contents

Most disappointing design projects are not caused by bad design. They are caused by a brief that described a feeling rather than a problem, arrived without numbers, or left out the constraint that later forced a rebuild. This article is what we would want from a merchant before starting, written so you can prepare it in an afternoon rather than a fortnight.

Why the Brief Decides the Project

A brief does three jobs. It tells the designer what success looks like, so the work can be judged against something other than taste. It surfaces constraints early, while they are cheap to accommodate. And it sets the decision process, which is what stops a project stalling in its fourth week of feedback. A vague brief does not produce a flexible project. It produces an expensive discovery phase disguised as design.

What Does a Shopify Designer Do?

Worth stating plainly, because expectations vary. A Shopify designer works on information architecture and navigation, template design for home, collection, product, cart and content pages, the mobile experience, conversion focused layout decisions, and how the store will be managed after launch. On our projects that last point matters: we build on Online Store 2.0 architecture so sections, blocks and metafields can be managed through the theme editor (our Shopify developers), which is the difference between a site you own and one you have to call somebody about.

It usually is not purely visual work either. Choosing a theme, deciding what needs custom development, and judging whether an existing theme should be extended or replaced are design decisions with cost attached, which our theme guide covers separately.

Start With the Commercial Goal

The first question in any brief should be what you are trying to improve. Useful answers include increasing conversion, raising average order value, lifting subscription take up, improving mobile conversion, making a large catalogue easier to browse, launching a new range, moving the brand upmarket, reducing dependence on developers for routine content, or improving international journeys. "Make the website look better" is not a goal, because a website can look dramatically better and sell less.

Then give the designer the numbers: conversion rate, average order value, revenue, mobile against desktop conversion, traffic by device, add to basket rate, checkout completion, and returning customer or subscription rates where they matter. For context, across the 265 Shopify stores we have audited the median conversion rate was 1.7% (our conversion rate research), and at that level an improvement of half a percentage point is roughly 29% more conversions from the same traffic.

The strongest briefs go one step further and state a hypothesis. "Customers reach the product page but do not add to basket, and we believe product information, variant selection and delivery messaging are the reason" is something a designer can work on. In our product page work, badly designed pages typically have around two percentage points of improvement available, while average to good pages have nearer 0.5 to 1 (our product page research). Those are our working ranges from project experience rather than platform guarantees, and they frame design correctly: not an art purchase, but an attempt to make the store do its job better.

Set the Baseline Before Anything Changes

This is the easiest step to skip and one of the most valuable.

Record this before anything changes Before the project Thirty days after launch Conversion, mobile and desktop Average order value Add to basket rate Checkout completion Page speed scores Screenshots of key templates The same measures again Same period length Same traffic sources Seasonality noted What changed, listed What you would change next Without the left column, the only available verdict is that everybody thinks the new site feels better.
Take the snapshot before the project starts, not on launch day.

Save screenshots of the important templates too, because three months after launch it is surprisingly hard to remember exactly what the old mobile product page looked like. Include page speed, since a redesign can improve the experience and damage performance at the same time, which our speed guide explains. Without a baseline the post launch conversation becomes a discussion about feelings, and feelings do not tell you whether to invest in the next phase.

What a Good Shopify Design Brief Contains

If you want a practical template, these are the sections worth filling in.

A Shopify design brief on one page Business and goal The audience Products and catalogue What is staying What must change Brand assets References, with notes Content status Technical constraints Markets and languages Budget range Timeline Success measures The decision maker Missing any of these adds a week, not a paragraph
Each box is a paragraph, not an essay.
  1. Business and commercial goal. What you sell, how you make money, what stage you are at and why this project is happening now.
  2. The audience. Who buys, how they shop, what they compare, and what stops them. Segments matter more than demographics.
  3. Products and catalogue. Size, variant complexity, how often it changes, bundles, subscriptions and anything unusual in how products are configured.
  4. What is staying. Brand elements, functionality, integrations and pages that are not in scope, which is as useful as the list of changes.
  5. What must change, ordered by importance rather than by how annoying it is.
  6. Brand assets, and honesty about what does not exist yet.
  7. References, annotated. Covered below, because this is where most briefs lose value.
  8. Content status. What exists, what needs writing, what needs photographing and who owns each.
  9. Technical constraints. Theme, apps, integrations, ERP, fulfilment and anything under contract.
  10. Markets and languages, including any plans for international selling, which changes structure rather than styling (Shopify Markets guide).
  11. Budget range. A range, not a number you are hiding.
  12. Timeline, including the deadline that actually matters and why.
  13. Success measures and the decision maker. Both named, in writing.

How to Give References Usefully

References are the most misused part of a brief. A folder of beautiful screenshots tells a designer what you find attractive and nothing about what you want built. The fix is annotation: name the store, name the specific element, and say what it does well. "We like how this store handles variant selection on mobile" is a requirement. "Make it look like this" is a mood.

Three or four annotated references beat twenty unexplained ones. Include references from outside your sector too, because the best solution to a compatibility problem or a subscription flow often comes from a category you do not compete in. Our best Shopify stores article is organised exactly this way, with each store chosen for one specific thing worth learning from, so it works as a ready made reference library. Also say what you dislike and why, because that saves a round of design.

Brand Assets: What Designers Actually Need

Designers need your logo in vector format with clear space rules, your fonts with licences that permit web use, your colour values including accessible combinations, your photography with the rights to use it, and a sense of tone of voice. That last one shapes button copy, empty states, error messages and delivery information, all of which are design decisions in practice.

If you have none of it, say so at the briefing stage rather than halfway through. Brand development is a separate piece of work with its own timeline, and discovering it mid project is one of the most common causes of delay we see.

Content Is the Usual Delay

Design projects wait for content far more often than content waits for design. The usual gaps are product copy, category descriptions, specifications, lifestyle photography, cut out product imagery, size and compatibility information, policy pages and anything regulated. Decide who writes, who photographs, who approves and by when, and treat those dates as project dependencies rather than good intentions.

Two practical points. Design with real content wherever possible, because perfect placeholder text hides problems that appear the day a 90 character product name arrives. And if photography is being reshot, book it early, since it is usually the longest lead item in the whole project.

Technical Constraints and Integrations

Tell the designer what cannot break. That means the current theme and its age, the apps that must stay and why, integrations with ERP, fulfilment, accounting or a 3PL, and commercially important functionality such as subscriptions, wholesale, loyalty or international markets. Anything under contract belongs here too.

Theme age deserves a specific mention. Of the 265 stores we audited, 196 were still running legacy themes predating Online Store 2.0, and stores we moved across gained an average 23 points of mobile PageSpeed (our speed research). If your store is in that group, the brief should establish whether the theme is the real constraint before deciding how much visual change is needed. Our apps guide covers the stack side of the same question.

Budget and Timeline, Honestly

Give a range. It is a scoping tool rather than a negotiating weakness, because without it you receive proposals solving a different problem from the one you can afford to solve. What moves the number is catalogue size, how many templates are custom, integrations, content production, migration complexity and how much needs to be managed by your team afterwards, which our build cost guide breaks down.

On timelines, the two things merchants control most are content production and review speed. We publish our package pricing openly (our Shopify packages), bill retainer clients a month in arrears rather than upfront, do not tie anyone into long contracts, and include a 3 month guarantee on development projects. We mention that here because the commercial terms are part of what you are briefing against, and vagueness about them is as unhelpful from an agency as vagueness about goals is from a merchant.

Who Decides?

Name one decision maker. Not a committee, not a founder who joins at week six, and not four stakeholders giving contradictory feedback in separate emails. Agree who consolidates comments, how quickly feedback comes back, how many rounds are expected and how disagreements get resolved. In our experience this single point predicts project smoothness better than budget, scope or complexity.

How the Design Process Actually Runs

Projects vary, but the shape is consistent, and the useful thing for a merchant is knowing where you are needed.

Where the merchant is actually needed 1 2 3 4 5 6 Discovery Structure Visual design Build Review and testing Launch and review You are needed: goals, data, constraints You are needed: page priorities You are needed: consolidated feedback Mostly us, content deadlines matter You are needed: real device checks You are needed: the 30 day comparison Availability for reviews is a project dependency, like content is.
Your availability is a dependency, exactly like content is.

Discovery establishes goals, data and constraints. Structure and wireframes settle what goes where and in what order, which is the cheapest stage to change your mind. Visual design applies the brand to that structure. The build turns it into a Shopify theme. Review and testing covers real devices, content entry and edge cases, not just a desktop preview, which is why our mobile first guide argues for testing on phones first. Then launch, followed by a review against the baseline you recorded at the start.

What a Designer Needs From You During the Project

During the project a designer needs timely feedback, consolidated rather than contradictory, content delivered on the agreed dates, access to the systems and accounts involved, decisions on trade offs, and somebody available to answer questions about how the business actually works. That last one is underrated. The fastest projects are the ones where a designer can ask why something is done a particular way and get an answer the same day.

What Not to Put in a Brief

  • Pixel level instructions. Specifying a button colour removes the expertise you are paying for, and usually solves a symptom.
  • A competitor screenshot with "copy this". It imports their compromises along with their layout, and you cannot see their data.
  • An unprioritised feature list. Forty items with equal weight is not a brief, it is a wish list.
  • A specification written by committee, which typically contains three incompatible visions and no decision.
  • A solution before the problem. "We need a mega menu" may be right, but the brief should say navigation is failing and why.

Common Mistakes We See

  • Choosing a theme before defining requirements, which locks in constraints nobody has evaluated yet.
  • Treating mobile as a smaller desktop, when for most stores it carries the majority of sessions.
  • Designing with perfect placeholder content, so real product names and descriptions break the layout later.
  • Changing everything at once, which makes it impossible to tell what worked.
  • Ignoring internal users, so the team inherits a store that is beautiful and painful to update.
  • Judging the project only at launch, rather than against the baseline after 30 days of real trading.

The One Page Brief Checklist

If you want the short version, answer these before you speak to anybody: what commercial problem are we solving, what are our current numbers, who buys and what stops them, what must stay and what must change, what brand assets exist, which three references do we like and specifically why, what content is missing and who owns it, what technical constraints cannot break, what budget range are we working to, when does this need to be live and why, how will we judge success, and who decides. A brief answering those is better than a fifty page document answering none of them.

Why Matters Perspective

The briefs we enjoy are rarely the most polished. They are the ones that say what the business is trying to fix, show the numbers, admit what is missing and name the person who decides. That combination lets a designer spend week one on the actual problem rather than on archaeology.

The opposite pattern is familiar too: a mood board, a tight deadline, no baseline and four opinions. Those projects can still produce a good looking store, and nobody can tell afterwards whether it worked. Given the choice we would take a one page brief with real numbers over a beautiful document without them every time.

Why Matters is a Shopify Select partner with Verified Skills across development and marketing, covering design, development, technical SEO, Klaviyo email marketing and Recharge subscriptions (our Shopify developers). Our pricing is published, retainer clients are billed one month in arrears and never tied into long contracts, and every development project carries a 3 month guarantee. See our Shopify packages or email us to talk through your project.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should I give a Shopify designer before starting?

Your commercial goal and current numbers, the audience, catalogue details, what is staying and what must change, brand assets, annotated references, an honest content status, technical constraints, a budget range, a timeline, your success measures and one named decision maker.

What does a Shopify designer do?

More than visual styling. The work covers information architecture, page templates, product and collection page design, mobile experience, conversion focused layout, theme implementation and how content will be managed afterwards.

How long does a Shopify redesign take?

It depends on catalogue size, how many templates are custom, integrations, content readiness and how quickly feedback arrives. The two things merchants control most are content production and review speed, and both routinely decide the timeline.

Do I need a complete brief before speaking to a Shopify agency?

No. A good agency will help you finish it. What helps most at first contact is the commercial goal, your current performance, the catalogue, a rough budget range and the deadline that matters.

Should I tell a Shopify designer my budget?

Yes, as a range. It is not a negotiating weakness, it is a scoping tool. Without it you get proposals that solve a different problem from the one you can afford to solve.

Should content be ready before design starts?

Not necessarily finished, but planned and owned. Design projects wait for content far more often than content waits for design, so agree who writes, who photographs and by when.

How do I know whether a Shopify redesign worked?

Record a baseline before anything changes, including conversion by device, average order value, add to basket rate, checkout completion and page speed, then compare the same measures over a comparable period after launch.

Is a theme or a custom build better for a redesign?

It depends on the requirement rather than the budget. Start from what the store must do, because choosing a theme first is one of the most common ways a brief ends up describing a solution rather than a problem.

Final Thoughts

A good brief is not a long document. It is a clear one. Say what you are trying to improve, show what is happening now, explain what cannot break, be honest about content and budget, and decide who decides. Do that and the design work starts on the real problem in week one, which is the difference between a redesign that looks better and one you can prove was worth doing.