A website brief is a written plan you hand a web designer so they can quote you properly. For a 10 to 30 page website, it should cover nine things: your goals, your customers and what you sell, a list of pages, who writes the words, the features and software the site must connect to, the rules your industry must follow, your budget range, your timeline, and who owns what when it’s done. The WA Government’s Small Business Development Corporation (SBDC) says to “create a clear, written brief” and to ask whether the designer can “supply a fixed price quote”. At CatalystHub, our Specialist build is from $1,500 inc. GST for up to 15 pages, with a custom design for your industry, compliance checks and integrations included. Beyond our fixed packages, we quote by the page, with guide prices of about $1,000 for 10 pages, about $1,900 for 20 and about $2,500 for 30. You can send your brief through our project brief form, and the exact price is fixed in writing before you pay.

Why a bigger site needs a written brief

The SBDC publishes a planner, the “Build a Website” booklet. It says you can use it to record what you gather while planning, and “If you’re using a professional designer to build your site, give them a copy of this booklet once completed.” The outline below draws on that booklet, with the extra detail a 10 to 30 page site needs.

The brief is also how you get a price you can hold someone to. On its page about hiring tradespeople, WA Consumer Protection says an estimate is “an approximate cost given before a firm quote and can change”, while an accepted quote forms a binding contract. It adds: “Asking for a written quote can help you to avoid disputes.” A written quote should describe the job, the time needed to finish it, and “details of any potential extra work that could cost more”. A clear brief gives the designer what they need to write that kind of quote.

The website brief outline

Work through these nine headings in order. A line or two under each is enough to start.

1. Goals: what the site is for

Answer two questions from the SBDC: “What is the purpose of your website?” and “What do you want people to do after visiting your website?” The second one is the action you want most, such as booking, calling or asking for a quote. The SBDC booklet calls these “Most wanted actions” and asks for them per page as well as for the whole site.

2. Your customers and what you sell

The booklet asks you to describe your target audience by where they are, who they are and what they care about. Then list each product or service with its “Main customer benefit”: the one reason a customer picks it.

3. Pages: a list of every page

The SBDC says to “Identify the pages your website should include and create a simple sitemap to show how they will be organised.” A sitemap here just means a list of pages, grouped the way the menu will show them. Common pages are “About Us, Contact Us, Products and/or Services, Frequently Asked Questions.”

For a bigger site, give each page one line. The SBDC’s “Planning each page” template asks for the page name, a description, the most wanted action, the main points to get across, keywords (the words people search with), the photos or video it needs, and who it’s for. Google’s own starter guide says that when you’re “setting up or redoing your site, it can be good to organize it in a logical way”, and that Google “primarily finds pages through links from other pages it already crawled”. So say which pages link to which.

Two extras matter as the page count grows:

Mark which pages are blog posts or news articles. In our quotes, the page count is the number of uniquely designed pages. Blog posts and news articles aren’t counted as newly designed pages, and your privacy and terms pages generally don’t count either, so keeping them apart keeps the page count honest.
If you’re replacing a site, list the old pages’ addresses. Google’s guide to moving a site says: “It’s important to map your old site’s URLs to the URLs for the new site.” It recommends permanent redirects, which send anyone (and Google) who visits an old address to the matching new page. On a redesign we set up those redirects for you.

4. Words, photos and keeping them current

Say who will write the words and supply the photos. The SBDC’s checklist says: “Write the content for your website pages and prepare any photos or videos you need.” It also asks: “How will you keep the information on your website up to date?”

If you don’t have everything yet, say so in the brief. Copywriting (writing the page words) is offered on every build we do. If you have your own words, we help you refine them; if you don’t, we write them for you, and AI-assisted copy is free.

5. Features and the software it must connect to

The SBDC booklet has a Yes / No / Maybe tick list under “What does my website need?”. It includes a content management system (CMS, the editor you use to change the site yourself), online booking, a shopping cart, a payment gateway, a blog, FAQs, a photo or video gallery, site search and email marketing. For online stores it also lists “Integration with an existing accounting system” and “Integration with email marketing/CRM system”. An integration is a link between your website and another piece of software, and a CRM is the software you keep your customer list in.

List every system the site must talk to, by name. Our Specialist build includes integrations such as booking engines, Google Business schema (code that describes your business to Google) and capability PDFs (a downloadable summary of what your business can do). Booking tools are part of that. If you already have a capability PDF, we put it on the site free; creating a new one is a separate job, quoted separately. Links to other business software come under a custom quote, which we write up before any work starts.

6. Rules your industry must follow

Name the rules that apply to you, so they’re built in rather than fixed later. This is a starting list, not legal advice:

Health services. Ahpra is the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, the health practitioner regulator. Section 133 of the National Law bars advertising a regulated health service in a way that is misleading, that offers a gift or discount without stating the terms, that “uses testimonials or purported testimonials”, that creates an unreasonable expectation of beneficial treatment, or that encourages unnecessary use.
Showing prices. Under section 48 of the Australian Consumer Law, a trader must not show only part of a price unless it also shows “in a prominent way and as a single figure, the single price”. This applies to goods and services usually bought for personal, domestic or household use.
Privacy. The privacy guidance for small business says that under the Privacy Act, a small business is one with “an annual turnover of $3 million or less”. Some businesses are covered “Regardless of turnover”, including health service providers and businesses trading in personal information.
Accessibility. WCAG 2.2 (the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) “defines how to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities”, at three levels: A, AA and AAA. The Australian Human Rights Commission’s April 2025 guidelines say organisations should meet WCAG 2.2 “at a minimum Level AA”, should put accessibility into what they ask for when buying digital work, and “cannot contract out their equal access responsibilities”. We keep our builds to accessibility standards.

Our Specialist build has industry compliance built in, covering Ahpra, ACCC and GST display rules, with a custom design made for your industry. ACCC is the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the consumer watchdog. In practice, we build the layout the rules call for, such as prices shown as total prices including GST, no patient testimonials on clinic sites, and practitioner registration numbers on profiles. Before launch we check that layout, and we also check your own words and photos against those rules. It is not legal advice. After launch, our optional Specialist care plan, from $79 a month, adds monitoring of your regulator’s rules and includes 30 minutes of content updates.

7. Budget range

The SBDC asks: “How much budget and time can you allocate to creating a website?” Give a range rather than nothing. It tells the designer what to plan for.

Our prices for a site this size:

Size	CatalystHub price
Up to 15 pages, with industry design, compliance and integrations	Specialist build: from $1,500, one-off
About 10 pages	About $1,000 (guide price)
About 20 pages	About $1,900 (guide price)
About 30 pages	About $2,500 (guide price)

Guide prices are for projects beyond our fixed packages: each newly designed page is roughly $100 up to 15 pages, with a lower price per page above 15. Which option fits your project, we work out with you on the call, and the exact price is fixed in writing on that 30-minute call before you pay. To see how these sit against other Australian designers’ published prices, read what a website costs by number of pages, or see every package on our pricing page.

Put ongoing costs in the budget too. The SBDC says to make sure support costs “are clearly outlined, whether it’s an hourly rate, monthly fee, or another arrangement”. On our Specialist build, hosting is free with no ongoing cost, and the care plan is optional. For a bigger custom project, hosting is usually free on our usual setup, and your quote confirms it. Without a care plan, you handle updates and fixes yourself, and if you need us, you email or call and we help at our hourly rate.

8. Timeline

Write down when you want to launch, and any date the site can’t miss, such as a product launch or the start of a season. The SBDC says a website provider should give you “a schedule which details the key milestones of your website”.

A Specialist build is delivered within 7 business days of the kickoff call. For a site over 15 pages, there’s no set time: the timeline is agreed in writing on the call. Either way, the 30-minute call locks in scope, price and timeline together, and you get them in a one-page summary in writing before you pay.

9. Ownership, changes and payment

The SBDC’s advice is: “You should own your website, domain name, and the copyright to your content, not your website designer or developer.” Confirm this in writing, check “how many rounds of changes are included”, and “Try to avoid paying for your new website in full, upfront.” Its guide to choosing a designer also suggests paying “in agreed instalments once certain milestones are reached”, and asking “Are there any additional hidden costs?”

Here’s where we stand on each:

Ownership. You own your site, its code and its content. When we register a domain for you, you’re listed as the owner. On our usual setup, you get a single handover sheet listing the GitHub repository (where your site’s code is stored, with you as its owner), the domain login, the Cloudflare hosting account, the editor login and any other service logins.
Changes. Every build, including sites over 15 pages, gets unlimited revisions until you’re 100% happy.
Payment. Bigger builds can be paid 50/50, half at the start and half at launch. Split payments through Klarna are also available, and other arrangements can be agreed on the call.
Costs. The price is fixed in writing before the project starts, and quotes are generally valid for two weeks.
Platform. We’re not tied to one platform. We recommend the setup that suits your project, and you choose. If you want WordPress, we’ll build on WordPress, with the price fixed in writing before you pay. Free hosting applies to our usual setup.

Before launch, we set up Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics for free, and keep an eye on them until handover, generally one to two weeks after the site goes live. Our sites load in under a second on 4G, and score 95+ on mobile in Lighthouse, Google’s speed test.

A brief you can copy

Copy this into an email or document and fill in each line:

1. Goals: The site is for ___. The main thing visitors should do is ___.
2. Customers: They are ___, based in ___. Our services and why people pick each: ___.
3. Pages: (one line each: page name, what it's for, what visitors should do next)
   Blog or news sections: ___. Old site address (if replacing): ___.
4. Words and photos: Written by ___. Photos from ___. Kept up to date by ___.
5. Features and software: Booking ___. Payments ___. Customer list (CRM) ___. Other ___.
6. Industry rules: ___ (for example Ahpra, price display, privacy, accessibility).
7. Budget: $___ to $___ to build, $___ a month after launch.
8. Timeline: Launch by ___. Fixed dates: ___.
9. Ownership and payment: We need to own ___. Payment preference: ___.

Who we’ve built for

The Aesir Legal website was a Specialist build, for a Perth law firm practising commercial law. It includes an interactive diagnosis tool that lets a business owner check where they stand, then book, and the site footer shows the firm’s legal liability statement.

Send your brief and get a fixed price

When the brief is ready, send it through our project brief form. The link picks the Specialist build for you; for more than 15 pages, choose “Custom / bigger project” instead. The form takes about a minute: your name, business, email, the build you’re after, and a “What do you need?” box for the main points of your brief.

Sending the brief doesn’t commit you to anything. You see a fixed price first and decide from there. On a 30-minute call (Google Meet or phone) we lock in scope, price and timeline, and you get a one-page summary in writing before you pay. Payment through Stripe starts the build. If your job doesn’t fit a package, it’s a custom quote, and we do those too.

Frequently asked questions

What should I put in a website brief? Your goals and the main action you want visitors to take, your customers and services, a list of pages, who writes the words, the features and software the site needs, the rules your industry must follow, your budget range, your timeline, and who will own the site. The SBDC’s “Build a Website” booklet covers many of these headings.

How long should a website brief be? A line or two under each heading is enough to get a quote. For a 10 to 30 page site, add one line per page so the page count is clear. Our brief form asks only for the main points, and the 30-minute call then locks in scope, price and timeline.

Do I need to know my budget before I write a brief? A range helps. Our Specialist build is from $1,500 inc. GST for up to 15 pages. Beyond our fixed packages, guide prices are about $1,000 for 10 pages, about $1,900 for 20 and about $2,500 for 30. We work out which fits with you on the call, and the exact price is fixed in writing before you pay.

Do I have to write all the words myself? No. Copywriting is offered on every build. We help refine words you already have, or write them for you, and AI-assisted copy is free.