A good website project checklist saves you weeks of delay and thousands of euros in wrong turns. The difference between a project that runs smoothly and one that stalls halfway through rarely sits with the agency, and almost always with the preparation. Walk in with a vague request (“we want a new site, can you give us a price?”) and you get a vague quote back, full of buffer and assumptions. This article sits under our complete guide to custom website development and gives you nine concrete parts that belong in every brief, plus a copyable checklist you can lift straight into your own document. Fill it in before you request quotes and you compare agencies on equal footing, and you know up front roughly what a website costs to build.
Why does a good brief make such a difference?
An agency that has to guess builds in buffer. That is not bad faith, it is risk management. The more uncertainty sits in your request, the higher the price and the bigger the chance the scope shifts mid-project. In practice a sharp brief lowers a quote by 15 to 30 percent, simply because the agency no longer has to budget for the worst case.
There is a second effect. A good brief makes quotes comparable. Ask three agencies for a price based on two sentences and you get three quotes about completely different things. One includes content, the other does not. One assumes an integration, the other does not. A fixed brief forces everyone to quote on the same scope.
Which goals and KPIs belong in the brief?
Do not start with “how should the site look”, start with “what should the site do”. A website is a means, not an end. Write down what should measurably change once the site is live. Vague: “more brand awareness”. Sharp: “at least 30 quote requests per month within six months of launch”.
Good goals are concrete and measurable. A few we see regularly:
- Lead generation: a number of requests or demo bookings per month.
- Online sales: a revenue or conversion target per month for a web shop.
- Recruitment: a number of applications or a lower cost per applicant.
- Authority and SEO: ranking on a set of search terms, more organic traffic.
- Efficiency: fewer phone calls through better self-service on the site.
Attach a number and a deadline to each goal. That helps the agency, and it helps you decide a year from now whether the investment paid off. Performance is part of this too: Google factors Core Web Vitals into how it judges your site, so put “loads in under 2.5 seconds” in your brief as a KPI without hesitation.
Who exactly are you building the website for?
“Everyone” is not an audience. The sharper you describe the visitor, the more focused the design, the copy and the functionality become. Describe your primary audience as if you have one concrete person in front of you.
For each audience, answer:
- Who are they? Role, sector, company size, or for consumers their age and situation.
- What problem do they solve through your site? The reason they show up.
- On which device? A lot of B2B happens on desktop, a lot of consumer traffic on mobile. That steers the design.
- How technical are they? This sets the complexity you can ask of a form or configurator.
- What action do you want them to take? Call, request, buy, download.
How do you draft a sitemap?
You do not need to be a designer to sketch a sitemap. It is simply a list of the pages your site will have, with the main menu items and what sits underneath them. The agency refines it, but your first version makes the scope tangible. A 6-page site and a 25-page site are different projects with different prices.
A simple structure for an SMB services site looks something like this:
- Home
- Services (with a sub-page per service)
- About
- Cases or work
- Blog or knowledge base
- Contact
For each page, note briefly what goes on it and whether the page is uniquely designed or a repeatable template (think blog articles or service pages). That distinction drives a large part of the design budget. For the difference between design and build, our web design service is a useful starting point.
Is your content ready, and who writes it?
This is the silent killer of nearly every website project: the content. It is not the design or the technology that runs late, it is the copy that never arrives. We see projects that could finish technically in four weeks sit still for months because the “About us” text is not written yet.
Make clear per page who supplies the content and when. That goes for copy, but also for photos, logos, video and product data. The table below is a handy way to map it.
| Item | Who supplies it? | Status | Deadline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copy for home + services | Client or copywriter | Draft / ready | Date |
| Photos and imagery | Own photographer or stock | Available / to make | Date |
| Logo and brand identity | Existing or new needed | Ready / missing | Date |
| Product data or cases | Client | Complete / partial | Date |
| Video (optional) | External party | Yes / no | Date |
Budget 2 to 6 weeks of writing for a site of 8 to 15 pages, separate from the build. If you have no time or no writer, ask the agency explicitly to include copywriting in the quote. That costs extra, but it prevents a site that stays half finished.
Which reference sites should you supply?
Two to four reference sites say more than ten pages of text about what you like. But do not hand them over without explanation. “Make it like this site” is useless, because the agency does not know whether you mean the colours, the structure, the typography or a specific feature.
For each reference, say:
- What do you like? The style, the structure, the tone, or a specific element.
- What would you do differently? This stops the agency copying the whole site.
- Competitor or inspiration? A competitor you compare on substance, inspiration usually on visuals.
Supply one or two examples of sites you specifically do not want, too. That sounds contradictory, but negative references often sharpen the direction faster than positive ones. An agency that knows what you dislike avoids that side without having to guess.
Which functionality is must-have and which is nice-to-have?
This is where most scope creep starts. During a project “can we also just” requests almost always appear, and they push the price up. So split your functionality up front into three layers: must-have, should-have and nice-to-have. That makes it easier to quote an MVP, and it gives you a dial to turn when the budget gets tight.
| Priority | Example | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Must-have | Contact form, service pages, mobile responsive | Without this the site does not go live |
| Should-have | Blog, newsletter signup, multiple languages | Important, but can wait for phase 2 |
| Nice-to-have | Live chat, customer portal, configurator | Nice later, not a launch blocker |
Be specific with features that look complex. “A search function” can be a simple filter or a full search engine across thousands of products, and those two differ by a factor of ten in build time. How best to scope these functional requirements is covered in our pillar on custom website development, where we break down the impact of each feature type on time and price.
Which systems does the website need to connect to?
Integrations are often the most expensive and most underestimated line in a quote. A form that sends an email is a different thing from one that drops leads into your CRM, processes a payment and sends a confirmation. List every system the site needs to talk to up front.
Common integrations in SMB projects:
- CRM: HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce for leads and contacts.
- Accounting: Exact Online, Moneybird, e-Boekhouden for invoices and orders.
- Payments: Mollie or Stripe for a web shop or paid bookings.
- Email marketing: Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Brevo for newsletters.
- Calendar and bookings: Calendly, TidyCal or a custom calendar.
- Analytics: Google Analytics 4, plus a consent solution like Cookiebot.
Name the exact system and version per integration if you know it. “A link to our accounting software” forces the agency to assume, “integration with Exact Online via their REST API” gets you an accurate price. If there is no clean API, say so: integrations with older systems that lack a modern interface are far more expensive.
How do you state budget and timeline realistically?
Plenty of business owners hold back their budget, afraid the agency will “land right on it”. That works against you. Without a range you get a quote that sits next to your reality, and you start over. An agency does not use your budget to make you pay the maximum, it uses it to fit the scope. With €5,000 you make different choices than with €25,000.
Give a range instead of an exact figure. “Between €8,000 and €12,000” is enough to design the right solution. State your desired launch date too, and whether it is hard (a trade fair, a product launch) or indicative. A hard deadline often costs 20 to 35 percent more, because more people have to work in parallel.
| Item | Vague (avoid) | Sharp (use this) |
|---|---|---|
| Budget | ”As cheap as possible" | "€8,000 to €12,000 including content” |
| Timeline | ”Quickly" | "Live before 1 October, fair on the 5th” |
| Maintenance | ”We will see later" | "Monthly budget of €100 to €200 after launch” |
Alongside the build, count on ongoing costs for hosting, maintenance and updates. What a website really costs over two years, those monthly figures included, we break down in our article on what a website costs to build. Which type of setup fits you depends on your CMS choice, which we compare in WordPress, custom or headless.
Who decides on your side?
A website project rarely fails on technology and often fails on a slow or fragmented decision line. If three people weigh in and nobody cuts the knot, every design round drags on for two weeks. Agree up front who the final decision-maker is, who the day-to-day contact is, and who looks on but does not decide.
- Final decision-maker: cuts knots on design, scope and budget. One person, reachable within 24 hours.
- Day-to-day contact: supplies content, reviews interim versions, answers questions. Count on 2 to 4 hours per week.
- Onlookers: give input, but their opinion does not overrule the decision-maker. Make that explicit, otherwise every round stalls.
Copyable checklist
Below is the complete website brief checklist. Walk through these points, fill them in and paste them into a document. That document is your brief.
- Goals and KPIs with numbers and deadlines (leads, revenue, traffic, speed)
- Audience described as a concrete person, plus device and desired action
- Draft sitemap with pages and which are unique or templates
- Content status per page: who writes, when ready, imagery arranged
- Reference sites (2 to 4) with a note on why, plus 1 counter-example
- Functionality split into must-have, should-have, nice-to-have
- Integrations with exact system names (CRM, accounting, payments)
- Budget range and desired launch date (hard or indicative)
- Decision line set: final decision-maker, contact, onlookers
- Maintenance expectation after launch (monthly budget and who does it)
Keep it short. A strong brief fits on two to four pages. The aim is not to nail down every detail, but to give the agency enough to write a fair, comparable quote. For the technical side the agency should be able to deliver under the hood, Google’s own guide to search-friendly sites is a solid free reference to hold up next to their proposal.
What is the first step?
Do not start by requesting quotes. Start by filling in the checklist above, in this order: goals first, then your audience, then the scope. Half the time you discover while filling it in that your site should be simpler, or actually bigger, than you thought. That insight is free and saves you an expensive misstep.
Got your brief sharp and want to know whether the scope and budget add up? Take a look at our custom websites service to see what we build, or book a no-obligation call. We walk through your brief in thirty minutes and give an honest price indication. For the broader context, read our complete guide to custom website development too.
