How do I write a website brief?

Answer four things: what the site must do, who produces the content, what it must integrate with, and when it has to launch. Every scope dispute I have seen traces back to one of those being left implicit, and a clear brief also makes quotes comparable.

Why do website quotes vary so much?

Two reasons stacked together. Location and overhead account for most of the spread, because the same work costs different amounts depending on where the developer lives and how many salaries sit between you and them. The rest is that the quotes are often not for the same site at all.

Who owns my website after it is built?

You should own all of it: the domain registered to your business, hosting in your account, code in a repository you control, and the payment provider account in your name. If any of those sit with the supplier, you are renting the site at their discretion.

Pricing

What should a website quote include?

A quote should name a fixed price against a written scope, list the deliverables, state who owns the hosting, domain and code, define what counts as a post-launch fix and for how long, and say what is explicitly excluded. Anything vaguer becomes a negotiation in week two.

Answered by Anas Bin Masud 192 words 3 sections

The checklist

A written scope specific enough that both sides know what "finished" means
A fixed figure, not an hourly estimate that drifts
Payment stages, each tied to something you can open in a browser
Ownership stated: domain, hosting, code, payment account, all in your name
What happens to changes — quoted before built, not absorbed silently
The post-launch period, with "fix" defined against the scope
Handover documentation as a line item

What a good quote also says no to

A quote that lists only inclusions is half a document. The exclusions — content writing, photography, third-party subscriptions, migrations — are where surprises live, and naming them is a sign the supplier has done this before.

The three ambiguities behind most disputes

"Responsive", "SEO included" and "content migration" mean different things to different people. One sentence defining each prevents more argument than any contract clause.

The longer version

This answer is deliberately short. If you want the full treatment, Writing a website brief that gets you comparable quotes covers it in about 3 minutes — free, ungated, written from client work.

Who answered this

Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada and Pakistan — fifteen live client sites, six of them stores taking real payments. These answers come from those projects rather than from a content brief. More about how I work, or ask me something directly.