Web design proposal template that still works in week six.
A proposal is written to win the job, so it prices the work the client has already agreed to want and goes quiet on everything else. The version below carries a price list for the additions a website always generates, back while the client is still choosing which of them they want.
A web design proposal is the document you send to win a website project, and it has to do four things at once: show you understood what the client asked for, describe what you'd build, put a price on it, and say how the money and the dates work. The version printed below is filled in for a $33,600 eleven-week build for a group of three inns, and it carries one thing the free versions leave out, which is a price for every addition the project can reasonably be expected to produce. Copy it, download it as a Word file or a PDF, and edit it into your own.
Websites generate additions more reliably than almost anything else an agency sells, because the client can see the thing being built and keeps thinking of pages. Somebody thinks of a fifth location, or a second language, or one more form, or the blog nobody mentioned in January. The proposal is the only document in the file at the moment those ideas start arriving, since the contract and the scope document are still two weeks away, and it's also the document the client read most closely, because it's the one they read before agreeing to spend money.
What should a web design proposal include?
Everything a client needs to choose you, plus the numbers that decide what happens after they do. That means what you understood about their situation, what you're proposing to build in terms somebody can count, what you're deliberately not building, how the work runs week by week, what it costs, when each payment falls, what anything extra costs, and how a change gets agreed. The published versions cover the first half of that list well and stop short on the second. PandaDoc's free template runs to eight sections, opening with an introduction and a section called Words of Encouragement and closing on project terms and acceptance. Better Proposals builds its high-end version around a cover, a pre-written introduction, processes and timescales, a case study, a pricing table that calculates itself, digital signing and a pre-written contract. ClientManager's Word file keeps five: a cover page, a project overview, a case study, price options and terms of agreement.
What they do with the money is where the versions separate. PandaDoc prints a pricing table with placeholder lines reading Item 1 at $35, Item 2 at $55 and Item 3 at $200, and a single sentence elsewhere saying that additional features, pages or other changes to project requirements will require a separate change order document. That sentence is the right instinct and it's missing its second half, because nowhere in the template is there a number that change order could be built from. ClientManager goes further on pricing theory than either of the others, walking through fixed, hourly, value-based and packaged pricing and showing a three-option ladder at $3,000, $5,000 and $10,000, all of which helps you set the fee and none of which helps you in week six.
What does a filled-in web design proposal look like?
Like the one below, which covers an eleven-week website build for a small hospitality group at a fixed fee of $33,600. Ketteridge Inns runs three inns in the Finger Lakes, each on its own aging website, and a guest who can't get a room at one of them currently has no way of seeing that the other two have availability the same weekend. The work is one site with one availability search across all three properties, which matters for the proposal in a specific way: the number of properties is a variable the client controls, so it needs a price.
Project: Ketteridge Inns website design and build
Reference: [KI-01]
Date: [date] · Version: 1.0
1. WHO THIS IS FROM, AND FOR
1.1 Prepared for: Ketteridge Inns, [address]. Client contact: [name, title, email].
1.2 Prepared by: [your agency name], [address, email].
1.3 Named approver: [name, title, email]. Only this person's written yes changes anything priced in this proposal.
1.4 Everything priced here holds for 30 days from the date above.
2. WHAT KETTERIDGE ASKED FOR
2.1 Ketteridge Inns runs three inns in the Finger Lakes: the Ketteridge House in Geneva, the Millrace in Hammondsport and the Cold Spring in Aurora.
2.2 Each inn has its own website, built at a different time by a different supplier, and none of them can see the other two.
2.3 A guest turned away from one inn on a full weekend is not offered the other two, which the front desks estimate happens most weekends between May and October.
2.4 Ketteridge wants one website, one availability search covering all three inns, and one set of photography that looks like it belongs to the same company.
3. WHAT WE'RE PROPOSING TO BUILD
3.1 Seven unique page templates: home, property, room, dining, events and weddings, journal article, and enquiry.
3.2 Twenty-eight pages built on those seven templates: one home page, three property pages, eleven room pages, three dining pages, three events pages, six journal articles and one enquiry page.
3.3 One availability search covering the three inns named in 2.1, connected to Ketteridge's existing booking vendor.
3.4 Content entry for the twenty-eight pages in 3.2, from copy and images Ketteridge supplies.
3.5 Photography art direction for one shoot day, including the shot list and attendance on the day.
3.6 Analytics and enquiry tracking, configured and documented in one page of notes.
3.7 Launch, browser and device testing, and a 30-day warranty on anything that doesn't work as described here.
4. WHAT THIS PROPOSAL DOESN'T COVER
4.1 Copywriting. Ketteridge supplies the words for all twenty-eight pages.
4.2 The photographer's own fee and expenses, which Ketteridge pays directly. 3.5 covers our direction only.
4.3 The booking vendor's subscription and per-reservation fees.
4.4 Hosting, domain renewal and any plugin or theme licenses, quoted separately at the vendor's own price.
4.5 Any inn beyond the three named in 2.1, priced at 8.4.
4.6 Any language other than English, priced at 8.7.
5. HOW THE WORK RUNS
5.1 Weeks 1 to 2: discovery, sitemap and the content plan behind 3.2.
5.2 Weeks 3 to 6: design of the seven templates in 3.1, with two revision rounds at each of concept and detail.
5.3 Weeks 7 to 9: build, and connection of the availability search in 3.3.
5.4 Week 10: content entry for the twenty-eight pages.
5.5 Week 11: testing, corrections and launch.
5.6 The shoot day in 3.5 falls in week 4. No property or room page can be built before its images exist, so the shoot date governs the second half of the schedule.
5.7 A template counts as approved when the named approver in 1.3 confirms it, or five business days after we deliver it, whichever comes first.
6. WHAT IT COSTS
6.1 Discovery, sitemap and content plan: $3,600
6.2 Seven unique page templates, designed and built, at $2,400 each: $16,800
6.3 Availability search across the three inns, connected to the booking vendor: $5,200
6.4 Content entry, twenty-eight pages at $95 each: $2,660
6.5 Photography art direction, one shoot day: $1,540
6.6 Analytics and enquiry tracking: $1,700
6.7 Launch, testing and the 30-day warranty: $2,100
6.8 Total: $33,600
7. PAYMENT
7.1 40% on acceptance of this proposal: $13,440
7.2 30% on approval of all seven templates under 5.7: $10,080
7.3 30% on launch: $10,080
7.4 Approved additions under section 9 are invoiced with the next scheduled payment.
7.5 Invoices are due 15 days from the date we send them.
8. WHAT ANYTHING ELSE COSTS
8.1 Additional unique page template: $2,400
8.2 Additional page built on a template that already exists: $310
8.3 Revision round beyond the two included at each stage in 5.2: $640
8.4 Additional inn added to the availability search in 3.3: $1,150
8.5 Content entry for a page beyond the twenty-eight in 3.2: $95
8.6 Additional photography shoot day, art direction only: $1,540
8.7 A second language edition of the seven templates: $4,900, plus $140 for each page of content entry in that language.
8.8 Anything not named above: $135 per hour, quoted and approved before it starts.
9. HOW A CHANGE GETS AGREED
9.1 A change is anything not described in section 3.
9.2 We price it against section 8 within two business days and send it to the named approver in 1.3. Work starts when that person replies yes in writing.
9.3 Anything in section 3 that Ketteridge changes after accepting this proposal is requoted under section 8 before the affected work restarts, and work already completed against the earlier answer is invoiced.
9.4 Every priced change says which dates it moves and by how many working days. A change that moves nothing says so.
9.5 Because of 5.6, any change needing images we don't already have moves with the next available shoot date rather than with the request.
10. WHAT WE NEED FROM KETTERIDGE
10.1 Copy and images for all twenty-eight pages by the end of week 8. Material more than five business days late moves the dates in section 5 by the same number of days.
10.2 Booking vendor credentials and a technical contact there by the end of week 6.
10.3 One named approver under 1.3, with written notice if that person changes.
10.4 If work starts more than 60 days after acceptance, sections 6 and 8 are requoted at our rates in force on the start date.
11. ACCEPTANCE
This proposal describes the work and the price, and it is not the agreement. It becomes binding when the agreement between the parties names it by reference and version, or when both signatures below are dated. Accepting it accepts sections 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 as written.
For Ketteridge Inns: ____________________ Date: __________
For [your agency]: ____________________ Date: __________
Why should a web design proposal carry a rate card?
Because a price beside an option reads completely differently depending on the week it arrives. Section 8 sitting in a proposal is a menu, and a client reading it in January thinks about which of those things they might want and quietly decides the second language can wait a year. The same eight lines arriving by email in June, after they've asked for something, read as a bill for having asked. Not one of the numbers moved between those two readings, and the only difference is that the first version was part of the thing they chose while the second arrived as a response to them.
That's also the practical reason to put it here rather than waiting for the contract. Agency clients read the proposal, skim the agreement and rarely reopen either, so a rate buried in clause 12 of a document signed in February is a rate nobody remembers in June. There's a real argument for keeping the two documents apart, and a proposal and a contract do different jobs, but a rate card isn't a terms section. It's a price list, which is the one kind of content a sales document is allowed to carry without getting heavier.
The clause that makes the rate card work is 9.3, and it's worth copying word for word. Anything in section 3 that the client changes after accepting the proposal gets requoted under section 8 before the affected work restarts. Section 3 is where the client's own answers live, so the clause doesn't accuse anybody of anything. It says the proposal has a new version and the new version has a price.
How do you price a website when the page count isn't settled?
Quote the layouts and count the pages as two separate lines, because they move for different reasons and cost different amounts. Seven unique page templates at $2,400 is $16,800 of design and build work, and the twenty-eight pages assembled on those templates are $95 each of content entry. A client who decides in week five that they want a fourth dining page is asking for $310 under 8.2 and a couple of hours of somebody's attention. A client who wants a members area is asking for a new template at $2,400 and a genuine conversation.
Collapsing those two into a single per-page number is what makes web proposals go wrong, and it goes wrong in both directions. Quote a flat price per page and the client with eleven near-identical room pages is overpaying for ten of them, which you'll hear about. Quote a project total with no page number in it at all and the twenty-eight pages become thirty-four without anybody feeling they asked for more. This is the same distinction a website scope of work draws between templates and pages, moved one document earlier, into the only place the client will read it.
What happens when Ketteridge buys a fourth inn in week six?
They send a cheerful email, and because sections 3 and 8 exist the reply is a quote rather than a negotiation. The Slatestone, a farmhouse with three suites and a small restaurant, closes in week six and Ketteridge wants it on the site for the same launch. That's an additional inn on the availability search at $1,150 under 8.4, a new template for the restaurant's private dining room, which none of the existing seven covers, at $2,400 under 8.1, and five pages on templates that already exist under 8.2, being the property page, three suite pages and one dining page, at $310 each for $1,550. Content entry for those six new pages runs to $570 under 8.5, and the farmhouse needs its own photography, so a second shoot day is $1,540 under 8.6. One extra revision round on the new template, beyond the two in 5.2, adds $640 under 8.3.
That comes to $7,850, taking the engagement from $33,600 to $41,450, and it goes out as a single message the named approver can answer in a sentence. The date effect is the part that actually causes arguments, and 9.5 is the clause that gets it said early: the photographer's next free day is nine working days out, and under 5.6 none of the Slatestone's five pages can be built before those images exist, so launch moves nine working days. Ketteridge may well decide that's fine, or may decide to launch with three inns and add the fourth in December. Both of those are decisions they get to make, which is the whole point of saying it in week six instead of week eleven.
How long should a web design proposal be?
About four pages, which is roughly what the eleven sections above come to once the bracketed placeholders are filled in. Length stops helping at the point where the document starts explaining your process in general rather than this project in particular, and the case-study section that Better Proposals and ClientManager both build in is where that usually starts. A relevant case study earns its page. Three of them, plus a page on your methodology, is a proposal that gets skimmed to the pricing table, which means the rate card underneath it gets skimmed too.
Section 2 is the part worth spending words on, because it's the only section a competing agency can't also write. Four lines about full weekends and three front desks turning guests away is specific enough that Ketteridge can tell you listened, and it's the section that makes everything after it read as a response rather than a package. Everything else in the document is countable, and countable things get shorter the better you write them.
Rates read as choices while the client is still deciding
Section 8 takes about ten minutes to write and changes more about the next four months than anything else in the document. A client comparing three agencies isn't going to pick the other one over a price list, and having it there removes the single most uncomfortable conversation in agency work, which is the one where you invent a number for something the client already believes they bought. In June, the number is on a page they signed in January, and your job shrinks to pointing at it.
Once the work is running, the documents that follow carry the same rates forward: a web design contract names who owns the accounts and licenses, and the statement of work is what gets amended when something changes. Keeping one priced request per change, rather than a thread, is what makes that possible, which is why a change request form with the impact already priced beats an email every time. If the project is small enough that you could write every line today without asking another question, you probably want a quote rather than a proposal in the first place.
Frequently asked questions
What is a web design proposal template?
A web design proposal template is a reusable document an agency sends to win a website project, setting out what it understands the client needs, what it plans to build, how the work runs, what it costs and how it gets paid for. On agency work it has one more job that most published versions skip, which is to say what anything outside that list costs, so the version on this page prints a rate card and a requote clause alongside the usual sections.
Is this web design proposal template free to use?
Yes, with no sign-up and no email address. The full proposal is printed on this page, and you can copy it to your clipboard or download it as a Word file or a PDF from the buttons under it. Replace the client name, the build in section 3 and the rates in section 8 with your own, keep sections 9 and 10 close to the wording here, and delete anything your projects never involve.
How long should a web design proposal be?
Long enough to answer the questions that made the client ask three agencies, and short enough that the pricing gets read. The version above runs to eleven sections and fits on about four pages, which is the length agency clients tend to read end to end. A proposal grows past that when it starts explaining your process in general rather than this project in particular, and that material converts nothing.
Should a web design proposal include a rate card?
It should, because the proposal is the document the client reads most carefully and the one they reopen when they want something extra. A rate card sitting in a proposal reads as a menu of choices while the client is still deciding, and the identical list sitting in a change order two months later reads as a penalty. The numbers are the same in both documents, and only the week they arrive in has changed.
Does a signed web design proposal count as a contract?
Sometimes, and it depends on where you are and what the document says, so treat that as a question for a lawyer in your state rather than something to settle from a template. The practical point is a good deal narrower than that, because whatever a signed proposal does bind your client to is the text you wrote while you were trying to be likeable, so it's worth writing a proposal that could survive being the only signed document in the file.
How do you price a website when the page count isn't settled?
Price the layouts and count the pages separately. A website is a small number of unique page templates and a larger number of pages built on them, and those two numbers move for different reasons and cost wildly different amounts. The proposal above quotes seven templates at $2,400 each and prices any further page on an existing template at $310, so a client adding pages changes the total without renegotiating the fee.