A website brief for a US small business

Most website quotes a US small business collects are not comparable. One assumes you will write the copy. One assumes they will. One includes the booking tool. One treats it as a later phase. One is a template with your logo. One is a custom layout. They all say “website” on the invoice.

A brief is what fixes that. It is not a formal document and it does not need a cover page. It is the answers to a short list of questions, written down, so two studios are pricing the same job.

We already wrote the generic version — seven questions that apply wherever you are. This is the US-specific one: the same backbone, plus the bits that actually change the work when the business is in the United States. Accessibility, the software you already pay for, a budget in dollars, and the accounts a US buyer is expected to own.

We are a studio in Karachi. We work with US clients, we quote in USD, and we publish the hours that are actually available. That is relevant, and you should weigh it. The brief is still useful if you take it to someone in your city.

1. What a successful visit looks like

One sentence. Not “we need a website”.

• A homeowner in Austin searching for a fence company finds us, trusts the photos, and books a measure.
• An existing patient finds the portal and pays an invoice without calling the front desk.
• A facilities manager reads the compliance page and requests a quote.

This is the sentence every later decision gets tested against. If you cannot write it, that is the first task, and no developer can do it for you.

2. Who is arriving, and from where

One or two real audiences, described as people. “Office managers at clinics who have been told to cut the phone tag” is useful. “Ages 25–54, suburban” is not.

Say how they find you today. Google, Google Business Profile, Instagram, a referral, a truck wrap, a paper invoice. A site that has to confirm a recommendation is a different site from one that has to win a cold search, and most US local businesses need both — the Profile for the map, the site for the person who clicked through. Those are separate jobs, and the brief should say which one you care about first.

3. The page list

A list, not a sitemap diagram. Mark each page new, rewritten, or moved as-is.

The number that matters is how many of those pages are different from each other. Ten service pages sharing one layout is roughly one page of work. Ten pages that each need their own structure is ten. Developers price unique layouts. Page count alone tells them nothing.

If something already ranks — a service page, a location page, a blog post — say so, and say the URL. Those addresses need redirecting, or you throw away what they earned.

4. Who writes the words, and who takes the photos

The single most common reason a US project stalls: the quote assumed you would supply finished copy, and you assumed the developer would write it.

Decide explicitly:

• You write it — cheapest, and it will be late. Say when.
• They write it — costs real money, and needs interview time from you.
• They rewrite what exists — the usual middle.

Photographs are the same question. Stock looks like stock. A photographer is a real line item, and if the work has to happen at your premises, that is a local hire — we are not in the room, and we will say so. Existing photos may not be usable at web sizes. Say which it is.

5. What it must connect to, by name

This is where the hours actually go, and it is what separates a four-figure quote from a five-figure one.

List every system by its real name. “Payments” is not a spec. Stripe, Square, PayPal, Toast, QuickBooks, HubSpot, Calendly, Jane, Mindbody, Jobber, a specific EMR, a specific inventory tool — those are specs. For each, say whether it must be live and two-way or whether a form that emails someone is genuinely enough. Clients often ask for the first when the second is what they need.

If you sell goods, say how you handle sales tax. That is a configuration job, not a later surprise, and it is different in every state you ship to.

6. Accessibility is in the brief, not a nice-to-have

For a US business this is not a polish item. Website accessibility complaints are a real exposure in the United States in a way they are not in most other markets we work in. We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. It is a build fact: if you do not mention it, a cheap quote will skip it, and “skip it” is a decision you should make on purpose.

Write down, in one line, that the site should meet WCAG 2.2 AA — contrast that actually passes, a keyboard path that works, targets big enough to hit, and forms that can be completed without a mouse. If a design choice you want would fail that, you want to be told so before it is built, not after a complaint. The longer version of why this matters is here.

7. Who owns the accounts today

Before anyone quotes, write down who currently holds:

• The domain — registrar, login, the card on file. If “the last developer has it”, start solving that today. It is the most common thing that delays a US launch.
• Hosting and DNS.
• Google Business Profile, Analytics, and Search Console.
• Any ad accounts.

The answer at the end of the project should be you, in writing, from day one. A studio that wants those in their name “for convenience” is describing how the relationship ends, not how it starts.

8. When, how much, and which hours

The deadline, and what it is tied to. “End of the quarter” is a wish. “Before the trade show on the 12th” is a constraint, and it changes the plan.

A budget range in USD. Withholding it costs you. Without a range you get quotes across an order of magnitude; with one you get proposals you can compare. Anyone who inflates a quote to consume a stated budget has told you something useful, early and cheaply.

What those quotes tend to contain — and why $800 and $45,000 can both be honest numbers for “a website” — is in how much a website costs in the US. Our own published starting points are on the pricing section of the home page: from $600 for a small five-page site, from $2,000 for the tier that includes real SEO and a blog.

Hours. If you are hiring overseas, ask when they are actually available, in clock times, for your coast. We publish ours rather than claiming there is no time difference. There is no overlap in ordinary office hours. That is arithmetic. It is not a reason to walk away, and it is a reason to write things down.

What to ask for back

A brief is half the conversation. What comes back should include:

• A fixed price for a defined scope, or a day rate with an estimate and the assumptions behind it.
• What is not included. More useful than the inclusions list.
• How many revision rounds, and what happens after them.
• Who owns the code, domain, hosting and analytics at the end.
• What happens after launch — how long support lasts, what it covers, what it costs afterwards.
• Whether WCAG 2.2 AA is in the build or is being treated as extra.

If two quotes differ by a factor of three, those six answers usually explain the whole gap.

The version you can send this afternoon

If you write nothing else, put this in an email:

1. What a successful visit looks like, in one sentence.
2. Who is visiting, and how they find you today.
3. The page list, marked new / rewritten / as-is, with any URLs that already rank.
4. Who writes the words, and who supplies photographs.
5. Every system it must connect to, by name, and whether a form email is enough.
6. That the site should meet WCAG 2.2 AA, and that you want to be told when a choice would fail it.
7. Who holds the domain, hosting, Business Profile, Analytics and ad accounts today.
8. The deadline, a budget range in USD, and which US timezone you work in.

That is a better brief than most projects start with, and it makes two quotes comparable.

Send us that and you will get a fixed number and a straight answer on what it takes — including, when it is true, that what you are describing does not need us. The contact form is here. If you want the hire-decision version first, start with when hiring offshore from the US makes sense.