What to Ask Before You Sign a Website Brief

Most website projects go wrong before a line of code is written. The brief is where it happens — and most clients never see one until it is too late to change it.

Who owns what, from day one

Before anything else, ask this: when the project is done, who holds the domain, the hosting account and the code?

The most common trap in web projects is a developer who registers the domain in their own name, sets up hosting under their own account, and hands over a finished site with no way for the client to move it independently. Not malice — habit. But it means you are renting your own website.

A clean brief names the owner of each asset. The domain should sit in an account you control. Hosting should be transferable. The code, if it is a custom build, should be yours on completion. Ask for this in writing before the project starts, not after launch.

What the site is supposed to do

A brief that says "we need a website" is not a brief. A brief that says "we need a website so customers can book appointments without calling us" is one you can build to.

Every feature on a site should trace back to a job it does. A contact form exists so customers can reach you after hours. A menu exists so people can decide before they arrive. A review feed exists so a stranger trusts you before they book. If a feature does not have a clear reason, it is decoration — and decoration adds to the cost without adding to the outcome.

Before you sign anything, read the feature list and ask yourself: why is each of these here? If you cannot answer for three of them, the brief is not finished.

What the price actually includes

A quoted price can mean very different things depending on what is inside it.

Things that are sometimes included and sometimes not:

• Hosting setup and first-year cost
• Content writing or copyediting
• Photography or image sourcing
• Third-party integrations (booking systems, delivery platforms, payment)
• Edits after launch
• Search engine setup

Ask the studio to line-itemise what is in scope and what is not. A €600 quote that excludes hosting, images and post-launch fixes can end up costing €1,000 before you are live — not because anyone was dishonest, but because the assumptions were different.

On the other side: a price that includes everything is worth checking too. If a €600 project covers custom design, a reservation system, a delivery integration and ongoing edits, something is either missing or the margins are so thin that the work will be rushed.

What happens when something changes

Scope creep is the most predictable thing in web projects and the least discussed upfront.

You will think of something you need after the design is signed off. A page you forgot. A form that needs a field. A colour the director does not like. None of these are unreasonable requests, but each one has a cost, and a good brief says how those costs get handled.

The question to ask: what is the process if we want to change something after design is approved? A studio with a real process will have an answer. A studio that says "we'll be flexible" is setting you up for a disagreement later.

The same applies to timelines. If the brief says the site launches in three weeks, ask what the studio needs from you to hit that date — content, photos, logins, feedback. A three-week timeline assumes two weeks of your own responsiveness. If you cannot commit to that, the date is already wrong.

What you are agreeing to in writing

If there is no written agreement, do not start the project.

This is not about distrust. It is about having a shared record of what was promised, what was paid, and what happens if either side needs to stop. A proper agreement names the deliverables, the payment terms, and who owns the assets at the end.

Payment structure matters too. A reasonable split is something upfront to confirm the project and the rest on completion — that protects both sides. Paying 100% upfront before any work is done is a risk. Being asked to pay nothing until launch means the studio is carrying the cost of your project, which rarely ends well.

If you are being asked to sign something, read the section on cancellation and asset ownership first. Those two clauses tell you more about a studio's intentions than anything in the pitch.

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A brief done properly takes an hour to get right and saves weeks of rework. If a studio is reluctant to put the detail in writing before the project starts, that reluctance is information. The 30-minute intro call we run before every project exists for exactly this reason — to get the scope, the terms and the ownership settled before anyone writes a line of code.