How to write a website brief that gets comparable quotes

Wildly different quotes almost never mean wildly different quality. They mean the brief was open enough that each studio imagined a different project. One page, written once, makes the quotes comparable.

What to include

1. What the business does, in three sentences, for someone outside your industry.
2. What the site must achieve. Not "look modern" — "produce twenty qualified enquiries a month" or "let customers book without emailing".
3. Who it is for. The actual buyer, their situation, what they are worried about.
4. Rough page list. Even approximate. "Home, about, four service pages, blog, contact" changes a quote enormously.
5. Content: who writes it? The single largest variable in any quote.
6. Functionality. Forms, bookings, payments, logins, languages, integrations. Anything the site must do rather than say.
7. Who maintains it afterwards and whether you want that quoted.
8. Budget range. Yes, really.
9. Timeline and any fixed date — a trade fair, a funding round.
10. Two sites you like and why. The "why" matters more than the sites.

Why to state a budget

The common fear is that naming a number means paying it. In practice, withholding it wastes everyone's time: a studio quoting blind either overshoots and loses, or undershoots and delivers something thin. A range — "€4,000 to €7,000, more if there is a good reason" — gets you three proposals for the same project instead of three different projects.

What to leave out

Design instructions. Do not specify colours, fonts or layouts — that is the work you are buying, and prescribing it removes the value. Describe the problem; let them propose the solution.

Ask every quote to show the same lines

Discovery, content, design, build, testing, launch, training, maintenance. When each proposal breaks down the same way, the differences become visible and the decision becomes easy.