How to compare website redesign quotes: what should be included?

Give every proposal the same starting point

Start with a short brief that describes the business problem rather than a list of design preferences. Perhaps your service offering has changed, your team can’t update the site easily, or enquiries arrive without enough information to route them properly. Those problems suggest different priorities.

Write down the outcome, the constraints and the parts of the current site worth keeping. A useful brief might say:

We need prospective clients to understand our three service areas and send an enquiry to the right team. We want to keep useful existing resources, continue using our current CRM and give two staff members the ability to update service pages. Our internal marketing lead will coordinate approvals.

This illustrative brief leaves room for a considered solution while identifying the work that matters.

Share the same information with everyone quoting. Include the existing website, known integrations, content available for reuse, stakeholders, any fixed launch date and whether that date can move. If you have an investment range, sharing it helps a provider propose an achievable scope rather than guess at your expectations.

Record assumptions separately. “Existing photography will be reused” is an assumption until someone has checked whether the files are suitable and available. Unresolved assumptions are often where a seemingly fixed project changes later.

Compare deliverables, not just page counts

Templates and pages are different quantities

A template is a reusable layout, such as a service page or case study. A page is an individual piece of content using that layout. A proposal for six custom templates and 30 populated pages is different from one for six finished pages.

Ask for both numbers, along with the intended page types. Check what happens to existing articles, location pages, resources and downloads. If your team will populate the remaining pages, include that workload in your comparison.

Content upload is not copywriting

“Content included” needs a little unpacking. Does the provider review the existing material, plan a new page structure, interview your team, write copy, edit supplied text or simply upload approved files?

Ask who gathers information, who confirms technical claims and who signs off each page. For photography, illustration and video, separate asset creation from sourcing and placement. Confirm any licensing limits. A beautiful layout can still sit waiting for content if ownership of that work is unclear.

Strategy should produce decisions you can recognise

Discovery and strategy are valuable when their outputs help the project move forward. Look for named deliverables: an agreed audience, prioritised visitor journeys, sitemap, content plan or requirements document.

For visual design, clarify how many directions are explored, what gets presented for approval and whether desktop and mobile behaviour are considered before development. “Custom design” alone doesn’t explain the process or how much input your team will have.

Integrations need a defined job

“CRM integration” could mean sending a basic contact record into a platform. Your business might need service-based routing, duplicate checks, a notification to an account manager and a visible failure alert.

Describe the actual journey: what starts it, what information moves, where it goes and what should happen if the connection fails. Confirm whether third-party access, subscriptions or specialist work are required. The quote should distinguish a standard configuration from custom development.

Testing and ongoing care solve different problems

Pre-launch testing checks whether the agreed website works. Maintenance covers defined work after launch. Ask for the tested browsers and devices, form and integration tests, accessibility checks, and the approach to performance.

Accessibility deserves a defined scope rather than a broad assurance. Ask what standard or criteria the work targets, which templates and interactions will be checked, whether manual testing is included and who resolves identified issues. An automated scan alone is a much narrower deliverable than a detailed review.

Use a quote comparison worksheet

Copy this table into a shared document and add a column for each proposal. Use “included”, “excluded”, “client responsibility” or “clarify”, followed by the actual detail. A tick without a description can hide an important difference.

Give extra attention to the rows that would materially affect your business. A straightforward brochure site and a site that routes enquiries across multiple teams don’t need the same integration scope. Your comparison should reflect that.

Separate project costs from ongoing commitments

Ask for a one-off project total and a separate schedule of recurring costs. Confirm whether figures include GST, when invoices are due and what triggers each payment. Keep optional work clearly separate from the work required to launch.

For recurring costs, record the billing period, renewal terms, who holds the account and what happens if you change providers. Hosting, plugin licences, maintenance and marketing can sit in one package, but you should still understand the service and dependencies.

Choose a consistent comparison period, such as the first year after launch. Add the project fee, required recurring fees and known third-party costs for that period. Then note internal work separately: writing content, reviewing pages, gathering assets and attending training all require time, even when they don’t appear on the supplier’s invoice.

A lower fee may be a good fit because the scope is leaner and your team can comfortably do the remaining work. A broader proposal may make sense when the internal workload would delay the project. Neither conclusion follows from the price alone.

Two proposals can describe very different projects

Imagine a professional services business comparing these fictional scopes. No prices or results are implied.

• Proposal A: new design and build, supplied copy uploaded to 12 pages, one standard contact form, and editor training. The client prepares the content and arranges any migration advice separately.
• Proposal B: discovery, service-page planning and copywriting, new design and build, agreed existing resources migrated, enquiry routing into the CRM, a URL migration plan and documented launch testing.

Proposal A may be entirely suitable if the business already has approved content, a simple enquiry process and someone managing search migration. Proposal B covers more of the work if those capabilities are missing.

To compare them, ask what it would take to reach the same agreed outcome. Add the missing responsibilities to A, or remove unnecessary work from B. Then compare the revised scope, dependencies and total commitment. This is more useful than treating a longer proposal as automatically better.

Resolve these details before agreeing

Turn important answers into the written scope rather than leaving them in a meeting note. These five questions are a useful final check:

1. What counts as accepted work? Agree how design, content and functional milestones are approved. For an enquiry form, that might include required-field validation, a confirmation message, successful delivery to the right team and a tested record in the CRM.
2. What does the schedule depend on? Separate the provider’s production time from your approval and content deadlines. Identify the decision-maker and what happens when feedback arrives late.
3. How are changes handled? Confirm that additional work is described, priced and approved before it proceeds, with any effect on the launch date made clear.
4. What happens after launch? Distinguish correcting a defect from requesting a new feature. Record the support period, reporting route and responsibilities outside that period.
5. What will we control at handover? Confirm ownership or licensing of the design and content, access to essential accounts, source files where applicable, training, backups and any limits on moving the website elsewhere.

If you’re also deciding which team to work with, our guide to choosing a marketing agency covers that broader decision. The quote comparison has a narrower job: making the purchase clear.

When a smaller refresh makes sense

A full rebuild may be unnecessary if the platform is manageable, the structure still fits the business and the main problems are confined to a few pages or interactions.

Ask whether targeted work could address the goal: clearer service copy, better mobile navigation, a simpler enquiry form or updated page layouts. Conversely, a refresh may leave the underlying problem untouched if your platform prevents required integrations or your team can’t maintain it effectively.

Request the reasoning behind the recommended approach. It should connect to your constraints and objectives, not simply to the age of the site.

Common questions about website redesign quotes

How many quotes should we compare?

Enough to understand the available approaches without creating an unmanageable evaluation. The quality of the shared brief matters more than collecting a large number of proposals. If two quotes describe different work, clarify the scope before requesting another.

Should SEO be included in a website redesign?

Responsibility for existing search visibility should be explicit. A redesign can change important pages and URLs, so agree who reviews those changes and tests the launch. That is distinct from an ongoing SEO programme. “SEO included” should name the actual deliverables.

Can a fixed-price quote still change?

It can if the agreed scope or assumptions change under the contract. Ask how variations are identified and approved, and which unknowns remain. Review the terms themselves rather than relying on the phrase “fixed price”.

What if we don’t know how many pages we need?

Ask whether a defined discovery stage can establish the structure and requirements before the main build is priced. Confirm what that stage delivers and whether you can use the outputs independently. It is a separate commitment, not automatically free.