Website brief template: what to send a web designer for an accurate quote.

A good website brief fits on one or two pages and answers nine plain questions: what the business does, why you want a site now, what the site must do, who it is for, which pages and features you need, who supplies the content, what you already have, and what your deadline and budget are. Copy the template below into an email and send the same version to every designer you are considering, whether that is a studio in Neath or an agency in Cardiff. Gaps are fine. The first phone call is there to fill them.

The website brief template

Copy everything in the box into an email or a document and delete whatever does not apply. Short, honest answers beat polished ones. The final section asks each designer to reply in the same format, which is the part many free templates leave out.

WEBSITE BRIEF

1. THE BUSINESS
Business name:
What we do, in one sentence:
Towns we cover:
Current website, if any:
Who signs this project off:

2. WHY NOW
What has prompted this:
What is not working today:

3. THE JOB OF THE SITE
Main job (calls, quotes, bookings,
sales or donations):
What a good month would look like:

4. THE CUSTOMER
Who we most want to hear from:
What they ask before they buy:
What worries them about buying:

5. PAGES
List each page and mark it
essential, nice to have, or later:

6. FEATURES
Anything beyond a contact form
(shop, bookings, quote tool, logins):
Software it must connect to, by name:

7. CONTENT
Words: ready, need editing, or
need writing:
Photos: own, stock, or need taking:
Logo and brand: ready or need work:
Welsh version needed: yes or no:

8. WHAT WE ALREADY HAVE
Pages that bring in work now:
Who holds the domain login:
Email on the same domain: yes or no:

9. TIME AND MONEY
Deadline, and what drives it:
Budget range, excluding VAT:
Who updates the site after launch:

10. PLEASE SEND BACK
An itemised price, with VAT shown
What is not included
How many rounds of revisions
What extra work costs
What we own and what we license
Monthly costs and notice period
What we leave with if we stop

What a brief is actually for

A brief has one commercial job: it makes quotes comparable. Tell three designers "we need a modern, professional website" and you will get three prices for three different projects, with no way of telling which is the good deal. Give them the same page list, the same features and the same answer about who writes the words, and the differences between the prices start to mean something.

It also protects you once work starts. Our own terms are a fair example: the price quoted is the price paid unless the scope changes, and we agree any difference first. A promise like that is only as useful as the written scope behind it, and the brief is where that scope begins.

Length matters less than people fear. A plumber in Merthyr does not need a twenty-page tender document. One or two pages is plenty for most small businesses, and even a half-finished version will get you a better conversation than a blank email. If writing it still feels like homework, you can start a project instead: our form asks for the essentials in four short steps, and we turn your answers into a plan.

A filled-in example: an invented Bridgend electrician

Here is the level of detail that helps. The business below is made up, a two-person electrical firm in Bridgend, but the answers are the kind that make a project easy to price.

Section	What they wrote
The business	Two electricians. Domestic rewires, EV chargers, consumer units. Bridgend, Porthcawl and Pencoed. Facebook page only.
Why now	Word of mouth has slowed, and people ask for a website before they book.
The job	Phone calls first, quote requests second. Two extra rewires a month would be a good result.
The customer	Homeowners with an older house. They ask whether we are registered and roughly what a rewire costs.
Pages	Home, Rewires, EV chargers, About, Contact. Later: a page each for Porthcawl and Pencoed.
Features	Contact form only. No shop and nothing to connect to.
Content	Words need writing with help. Plenty of real job photos on our phones. Logo is fine. No Welsh version.
What we have	A domain bought years ago by a nephew. Not sure who has the login.
Time and money	Before spring, because that is when the work picks up. £700 to £1,000 plus VAT. We would rather send changes than edit it ourselves.

Reading that as a studio, most of the quote is already clear. Five pages and a contact form fits our Essential build at £675 +VAT, plus £39 +VAT a month for hosting, SEO monitoring, maintenance and support. The two town pages are the real decision: they could wait and be added after launch from £150 +VAT a page, or the firm could start on Professional at £1,350 +VAT, which covers up to ten pages and local SEO. Every figure is on our pricing page.

The nephew's domain goes on the to-do list straight away, because nothing launches without it, and our guide to who owns your domain name explains how to find out. "Words need writing" is the first question on the call. The brief has done its job, because the conversation can start with decisions instead of guesswork.

Which answers change the price most

Colours and layouts are rarely what moves a quote. Scope is. This is how the answers in a brief map onto our own published prices.

What your brief says	Why it matters	Our price
Up to five pages and a contact form	A small, well-defined site	Essential, £675 +VAT
Up to ten pages, local SEO, a custom integration	More to write, build and link together	Professional, £1,350 +VAT
A shop, unlimited pages, API integrations	Stock, payments, tax and far more testing	Bespoke, from £4,000 +VAT
An extra page once the site is live	Added to a finished site	From £150 +VAT a page
A very short deadline	Depends on your content being ready	48 hours is possible for smaller builds, so ask
A new logo as well	A separate piece of work	See what logo design costs

Features are the line most worth writing carefully, because one short phrase can hide a very different project. "Customers can get a price online" might mean a form that emails you. It might also mean the instant quote calculator and delivery distance checker we built for Bramwood Timber. Both are reasonable, and they are not the same job.

So describe what the customer does, step by step, and name any software involved. "Integrate with our systems" cannot be priced. "Bookings go into our Calendly and a confirmation email goes out" can. Being that specific is how larger builds stay on track as well: Packet Collection's site includes an interactive solution explorer and interactive pricing, and its review opens on exactly this point.

"WebDev Wales absolutely nailed the brief for our site." · Director, Packet Collection

Why your content decides the launch date

Most of our sites launch within 2 to 6 weeks of getting your content, and the last three words of that sentence are the ones that matter. Our web design service builds from your words, images, logins and decisions, so a delay on any of them moves the schedule. The same is true almost everywhere, which is why content is the commonest reason a website takes longer than planned.

"We have all the content" often turns out to mean an old leaflet, some phone photos and a Word document nobody has read since 2019. That is a perfectly good start, but say so. Section 7 of the template asks for the state of each item because "needs writing" and "ready to paste" are different amounts of work.

Decide on Welsh at this stage too. A properly bilingual site gives each language its own web address, so the page count roughly doubles and so does the content job. How much it matters depends on where you trade: the 2021 census found 64.4% of people aged three and over in Gwynedd and 39.9% in Carmarthenshire could speak Welsh, against 11.2% in Swansea and 9.2% in Bridgend. Those figures will not make the decision for you, but they are why the question belongs in the brief rather than in an awkward conversation after launch. If you only need a little Welsh, the Welsh Government's Helo Blod service translates up to 500 words a month free of charge for eligible organisations.

A brief does not have to be clever. It only has to make two quotes comparable.

If you already have a website, protect what works

A rebuild can quietly throw away what the old site has earned. Before you brief anyone, list the pages that bring in work. Google Search Console will show them if you have it set up; if you do not, ask whoever looks after the site. Any page whose address changes needs a redirect from the old address to the new one.

We did this on ourselves. When we rebuilt webdevwales.com, the old site had 304 indexed addresses, so we kept the town and blog addresses unchanged wherever we could and sent each retired one to its new home in a single redirect. It is dull work, and it belongs in the scope, so ask every designer how they handle it.

Then gather your logins: domain, hosting, email, Google Business Profile and analytics. If your email runs on the same domain as your website, say so in section 8, because a careless move can take your email down with the old site.

Five mistakes that make quotes impossible to compare

1. Adjectives instead of requirements. "Modern and premium" cannot be quoted. "Phone number visible at the top on a mobile, and a quote form that takes under two minutes" can.
2. Reference sites with no reasons. Say what you like about each one: the navigation here, the photography there. Otherwise a designer has to guess whether you want the whole site copied.
3. Writing "SEO included". That could mean page titles and technical setup at launch, content written around real searches, or monthly work afterwards. Those are three different jobs at three different prices.
4. Leaving out the budget. A range does not invite anyone to charge the maximum. It tells them which solution to propose. Our own enquiry form asks for a budget band and includes "Not sure yet", because that is a useful answer as well.
5. Telling each designer a different story. If one gets a phone chat and another gets a long email, their quotes will not line up, and the cheapest may simply be the one that heard the least.

What to ask for in return

Section 10 of the template is where the expensive surprises get found. A low build price can sit on top of a high monthly fee, a short list of inclusions or a steep rate for changes. Put the same questions to everyone, including us. Here are our answers.

Question	Our answer
Is the price fixed?	Yes, in writing. It only changes if the scope does, and we agree the difference first.
How many revisions?	Two consolidated rounds: one at design stage and one before launch.
What do changes cost later?	Small changes to existing content are free on a fair-use basis. New work is in 30-minute blocks from £40 +VAT, and new pages start from £150 +VAT.
What is the monthly cost?	£39, £65 or £99 +VAT, covering hosting, SEO monitoring, maintenance and support.
What is the notice period?	No minimum term on a website plan, and 30 days' written notice to cancel.
What do we own?	You own your content, brand and domain. We own the code, you have a licence to use the site while your plan is active, and it runs on our hosting.
What if we stop?	The site goes offline. You get a free copy of your content on request, and your domain stays with you or is transferred to you at no charge beyond any registrar fees.

Other studios will answer differently, and some of their answers may suit you better. If you have someone in-house who wants to run the site themselves, for instance, a model that hands over the code could be the right fit. What matters is knowing which deal you are signing before you sign it.

What to do next

Fill in what you can this evening, even if half of it says "not sure". Send it to two or three designers and compare what comes back against section 10. If you would like us to be one of them, email it to dev@webdevwales.com, ring 07916 214 843, or start a project with the short version. There is no obligation, our prices are published before you ask, and if something cheaper would serve you better we will tell you.