Most of What You're Buying Isn't on the Quote

A friend who runs another agency, Aaron Whiffin at Webbed Feet, wrote recently about coming second: losing a job to a quote that promised more for less, then hearing from the client a year on when it hadn't worked out. I recognised a lot of it. But the question underneath it is the more useful one, which is why website quotes vary so much in the first place.

A quote can only list the things you can point at. Pages, a design, a shop, a contact form, a number at the bottom. Most of what you're paying for isn't on that list, because it was never a line item to begin with.

What isn't on the quote

Take the first meeting. Before anything's priced, I'll have asked what the site is for, who it needs to bring in, and what happens when your first enquiry arrives (that last one changes the brief more often than you'd think). That conversation never appears on the quote. It decides what the quote is for, which is the reason we stopped leading with the build a while ago.

Then there's everything I knew before I started. Eighteen years of building sites means I've made most of the mistakes already, on other people's jobs, and what you're paying for is the ones I won't make on yours. That's the bulk of the value, and it's the hardest thing in the world to put on a quote without sounding like every other agency (they all say "experienced" too, and I can't blame them).

Then the testing: a build checked on a private copy before you see it, on a phone as well as a desk, with the forms tried and the awkward pages looked at. Then the month after launch, when the things that only show up in real use get put right. Then someone to ring in year three who already knows how your site is put together. Have you ever seen any of that on a quote? I haven't, and I write them.

Why two quotes for the same site are so far apart

So you get two quotes for "a five-page website with a contact form" and the numbers are nowhere near each other. Same words, describing different jobs. One is just a template with your logo dropped in and a form that emails you. The other has had a person ask what the site is for, build it to do that, and stand behind it afterwards. It's the same reason a request for new colours can come back priced as a rebuild: the words on the quote and the work behind them have come apart.

You compare the numbers because the numbers are the only thing on the two pages that line up. I'd do the same in your position. What else is there to compare? But you're comparing the one part of the job that's easiest to write down, and the parts that decide whether your site is still working in a year are the ones neither quote can show you.

And the cheaper one isn't always wrong. A brochure site for a business that gets its work by word of mouth can be perfectly well served by the template, and I've told people so. The trouble starts when you can't tell which job each quote is describing. Can you, with the two in front of you?

How to compare them anyway

Ask each agency what happens before the build starts. If the answer is "you send us the content and we get going", the conversation described above isn't in there, and that thinking will be yours to do or it won't get done.

Ask what happens in the month after launch, and who you ring in two years when something odd appears (the answer tells you whether looking after the site was ever part of the plan). Ask what's been left out: your copy, your photos, the hosting, the yearly costs. Who's writing the words, for a start? And ask what else they build, because an agency that only builds one thing can't tell you whether it's the right one for you.

The agency that answers all of that without reaching for a brochure is describing a job. The one that can't is describing a price. Both will call it a quote.

Ask, too, what they'd have done differently on the last site they built. Anyone who has been doing this long enough has an answer, and it tends to be the most useful thing you'll hear in the whole process.

The best evidence I've got for any of this is that our longest client relationship runs the full eighteen years, and several are past ten. What keeps a client that long is the part that was never on the quote.

If you're weighing up quotes that don't seem to describe the same job, get in touch and I'll tell you what I think each one covers. That holds whoever you end up working with.