Website design questionnaire template that feeds the quote.

A website design questionnaire template should collect what the client needs the site to do, who writes and supplies the content and by when, who approves the work, which accounts you'll need access to, the deadline and the budget, and it should tell the client which part of the quote each answer prices. The one below is filled in for Saltmarsh Brewing Co., a brewery and taproom in Wilmington, North Carolina, whose answers produced a $12,610 quote, and you can copy it or take it as a Word file or PDF.

What should a website design questionnaire ask?

Ask for every fact your quote depends on, which means the questions about content, approvals and accounts matter as much as the ones about colors and favorite websites, and each question below ends with the line of the quote its answer prices.

The versions we read put most of their weight on design. HTML Burger's free template runs to 20 questions in four groups as a four-page PDF and asks for three websites the client likes and three they dislike. WP Umbrella's has 18 questions across the business, the technical and design needs and the scope, including the budget. ClientManager's covers seven sections, from project scope to maintenance, and comes as an image to save. Two of the three ask whether the client's text exists, and not one of the three asks who will sign off on the design, which is the answer that decides how many rounds of feedback you'll really be doing.

Sections 3, 5 and 7 of the questionnaire below carry the difference: who writes the text and by what date, one named person who approves and gathers everyone else's comments into a single reply, and a written note of what the client wants eventually but not in this project.

Why should every question point at a line of the quote?

Because a question with a visible reason gets an answer you can use, and an answer you can't price is one you'll end up absorbing later. When question 2.2 says it prices the tap list, the co-owner can see that "a chalkboard and an Untappd page, changed two or three times a week" is a cost, so she writes down how it really works instead of saying the site should just show what's pouring.

A question that can't name a line of the quote, a date or an assumption belongs in the kickoff call, which keeps the form short enough that clients actually finish it. If you build your prices the way a website quote built from every hour does, the questions are simply those hours read backwards, one for each thing the client knows and you don't.

What did Saltmarsh's answers change in the price?

Three answers moved the quote by $780 or more each, before anybody had designed anything. At the agency's illustrative rate of $130 an hour, the nine lines come to 97 hours and $12,610, inside the $10,000 to $14,000 range the co-owner gave in answer 6.2.

In answer 3.1 the co-owner writes all eight pages herself and sends them by November 20, so the quote carries copy editing at an hour a page, $1,040, where writing from scratch at three hours a page would have been $3,120, and the $2,080 between them is a choice she made knowingly rather than a surprise somebody finds in week four. Answer 2.2 added a line a first call would probably have missed, a tap list the taproom manager updates from his phone, at $1,040, because a beer page that only the agency can edit would be out of date by the weekend. Answer 2.3 did the same for events, priced at $780 as a calendar that repeats Tuesday trivia without anyone typing it in again.

The other six lines are discovery and a sitemap at $780, three layouts at $1,300 each, eight pages at $390 each, photo preparation at $520, testing and launch at $650 and project management at $780. Answer 6.1 set the schedule instead: the anniversary party on February 6 can't move, so design starts November 30 and launch is planned for January 29. Each answer then goes into the quote as a stated condition, the habit behind writing down what a price assumes.

Who approves the design, and why ask before the work starts?

Ask for one named approver and one person who gathers everyone else's comments into a single reply, and ask in writing before the quote goes out, because that answer decides how many rounds of revisions you'll really be doing. Saltmarsh has three people with opinions about the site, the two co-owners and the head brewer, and question 5.1 brought all three into view on October 16 rather than at the first design review.

Answer 5.2 names the co-owner as the person who gathers comments, with three working days to reply, and the quote prices two revision rounds per layout on that basis. In week three the head brewer emails his notes on the beer pages straight to the designer, and the reply is a single line asking him to send them through the co-owner, who folds them into her second-round reply two days later. Without 5.2 that email is a third round nobody priced. The same point is worth making out loud in the kickoff conversation about how changes get handled, and the questionnaire puts it on paper first.

What happens when a request contradicts an answer the client gave?

You price it as new work and point to the answer, which beats arguing about what somebody meant on a call nobody recorded. On January 4, in week five, the co-owner asks whether the site could sell anniversary T-shirts and tickets for the party. Answer 2.4 says nothing is sold on the site and answer 7.1 lists a merch shop as something for next year, so the request is plainly outside the quote and nobody has to debate it.

The agency prices two options the same day. A small shop for shirts and tickets is 14 hours, $1,820, which would take the total to $14,430 and past the top of the range in answer 6.2. Selling tickets only, through the ticketing service the brewery already uses for its release parties and shown on the Events page, is 4 hours, $520, and brings the total to $13,130. She approves the $520 option in writing on January 5, and the shirts stay where answer 7.1 put them. A request like this is best captured on a change request form the client fills in, so the price and the approval sit in one place.

When should the questionnaire go out, and how long should it be?

Send it after the first call and before the quote, and keep it to what a client can answer in about half an hour without chasing a colleague. Saltmarsh's has 18 questions and came back in four days. Sent any earlier, a questionnaire gets guarded answers from someone who doesn't know you yet, and sent after the quote is signed it only turns up problems you've already agreed to absorb.

If the client can't yet say who will write the text, price both routes and let them choose, and if they can't name an approver, settle that before you put a number on anything. Once the answers are in, they feed a project brief that carries the numbers on a larger project, or go straight into a web design quote with priced lines on a smaller one.

Question 7.1 is the one that pays for the whole form

The line worth copying into every questionnaire you send is 7.1: is there anything you want eventually but not in this project? A client who writes "a merch shop, maybe next year" in October has drawn the edge of the scope in their own words, and when the shop comes back in January as a small favor, it arrives as a $1,820 option with an answer to point to rather than as an awkward conversation.

From there the answers belong in the documents that follow the form, starting with the scope set out in a website development scope of work with a rate card and, once the client says yes, the web design contract that follows the quote. The questionnaire makes sure the numbers in both came from the client first.

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