How to write a website brief that gets accurate quotes

A website brief that gets accurate quotes lists what the site is for, who it is for, which pages it needs, which features it needs, where the content will come from, what it must work with, and what the budget and deadline are. Studios quote badly when any of those are missing, because they fill the gaps with assumptions, and every studio assumes something different. Three quotes for a vague brief are three quotes for three different projects.

Below is a template you can copy, followed by what each section changes about the price so you know where to spend your effort.

Why do vague briefs produce quotes that vary by 5 times?

Because the expensive parts of a website are the ones briefs usually leave out.

"A website for our consulting firm, around 10 pages, modern design" can be built for $2,000 or $25,000, and both quotes are reasonable readings of the sentence. The $2,000 reading is a template, your existing text, a contact form and a launch. The $25,000 reading is custom design for 10 distinct page types, copywriting, a case study system your team can add to, a careers section with applications, a CRM integration and a migration of the old site with redirects.

The brief's job is to say which one you mean. A studio quoting website design and development will ask you all of this on a call anyway; writing it down first means every studio hears the same answers, and your quotes become comparable. Our post on why web design quotes vary covers what the cheap readings tend to leave out.

The website brief template

Copy this into a document and fill in every section. Where you do not know, write "not sure" rather than deleting the line; a studio can help with a gap it can see.

WEBSITE BRIEF

1. About the business
   - Company name and what you do, in two sentences:
   - Where you operate (countries, cities):
   - Link to current website, if any:
   - What the current site does badly (be specific):

2. Goals
   - The one thing the new site must achieve (enquiries, bookings, sales, hiring, credibility):
   - How you will measure it after launch:
   - Secondary goals:

3. Audience
   - Who visits the site (job titles, situations, how they find you):
   - What they need to see before they contact you:
   - Languages the site must be in:
   - Devices they mostly use (phone, desktop, both):

4. Pages
   - List every page, grouped by section. Mark each as "new copy needed",
     "copy exists" or "copy will be rewritten".
   - Which pages are templates (e.g. one service page design used 6 times)?
   - Approximate total page count at launch:
   - Pages you expect to add after launch (news, projects, jobs):

5. Features
   Tick what you need, strike what you do not:
   - Contact form (where should submissions go?)
   - Quote or booking form (fields?)
   - WhatsApp or click-to-call button
   - Blog or news
   - Case studies or portfolio
   - Team page
   - Careers with application form
   - Search
   - Downloads (brochures, PDFs)
   - Multilingual (which languages?)
   - E-commerce (how many products, which payment methods?)
   - Login area or portal
   - Integrations (CRM, email tool, booking system, ERP; name each one)
   - Analytics and tracking (GA4, Meta pixel, others)
   - Anything else:

6. Content
   - Who writes the copy (us / studio / a writer we hire):
   - Photography: existing / new shoot needed / stock acceptable
   - Logo and brand guidelines: exist / need creating / need updating
   - Videos, illustrations, diagrams needed:

7. Design
   - Three websites you like, and what you like about each:
   - Two websites you do not like, and why:
   - Any design rules (brand colours, fonts, accessibility requirements):

8. Technical
   - Platform preference, if any (WordPress, Next.js, Shopify, no preference):
   - Who will edit the site after launch, and how technical are they:
   - Current hosting, domain registrar, and who has the logins:
   - Must the old URLs be redirected (keep search rankings)?
   - Performance targets (e.g. pass Core Web Vitals on mobile):
   - Compliance requirements (GDPR, accessibility standard, industry rules):

9. Budget
   - Budget range for the build:
   - Monthly budget for hosting and maintenance after launch:

10. Timeline
   - Hard deadline and the reason for it:
   - Dates when your team is unavailable for feedback:

11. Decision-making
   - Who gives feedback on designs:
   - Who gives final approval:
   - How many rounds of revisions you expect:

12. Questions for the studio
   - Anything you want each studio to answer in its proposal:

Which sections change the quote most?

Not all twelve sections carry the same weight. Four of them account for most of the price difference between studios.

Pages and page types. The count matters less than the number of distinct designs. Ten pages with ten layouts is ten designs. Ten pages where six share a service template is five designs. Say which pages are templates and the design estimate drops to what it should be. Our website cost calculator uses page count, features and design level for this reason.

Content. The single biggest hidden cost. If the studio writes copy for 12 pages, that is days of work and a separate skill. If you write it, the studio's estimate is smaller but the schedule depends on you delivering. If nobody has decided, the quotes will differ by thousands. Decide before you send the brief.

Integrations. Every system you name in section 5 is research, testing and often a paid plan. "Connect the form to HubSpot" is a few hours. "Sync enquiries two-way with our custom ERP" is a project. Name the system and link to its documentation if you have it.

Who edits after launch. This decides the platform, and the platform decides much of the cost. A team that will edit everything weekly needs a full content management system. A site that changes twice a year does not.

Everything else in the template changes the quote by percentages, not multiples.

What should you leave out of a brief?

Some things make briefs worse.

A design you have already drawn. A wireframe is useful; a finished layout in PowerPoint turns the studio into a typist and usually produces a worse site. Describe the content and the goal; let the designer design.

Technology decisions you cannot explain. "Must be built in React" is a fine constraint if you have developers who will maintain it. If someone mentioned it at a conference, leave it out and ask the studio to recommend.

Feature lists copied from competitors. A chatbot, a live chat widget, a newsletter popup and an animated hero each cost money to build and each can lower conversion on the wrong site. List features you can connect to a goal from section 2.

Vague quality words. "Modern", "clean", "professional" and "user-friendly" mean nothing in a quote. The three example sites in section 7 do that work better.

How do you know the brief is good enough?

Hand it to someone outside the project and ask them to list the pages and features back to you without asking a question. If they can, the brief is ready. If they ask "what does the contact form do?" or "who is writing this?", fix those lines.

Then send it to two or three studios, not ten. Ask each for a quote broken down by phase (design, build, content, launch) and by the features in section 5, so the proposals line up with the brief and with each other. A quote that comes back as one number with no breakdown is harder to compare and harder to negotiate.

What happens after the quotes come in?

Expect each studio to come back with questions. That is a good sign; a studio that quotes a brief without a single question either did not read it or plans to sort out the details later at your expense.

Compare the quotes against the brief line by line, not by total. A cheaper quote that leaves out content, redirects or the CRM integration is a different project. The website cost guide has the ranges to check each line against, and the post on questions to ask a web development company covers what to ask on the follow-up call.

If the performance target in section 8 is new to you, Google's documentation on Core Web Vitals explains what the metrics are and why passing them on mobile is worth writing into the brief.