August 11, 2026 · by David Gilbert · 3 min read · Web & E-Commerce
Early on, I'd quote a website job based on roughly what someone described in a two-line email, and roughly half the time I'd discover three weeks in that what they actually needed was a completely different shape of project. These days I won't quote anything until I've worked through five questions, and the conversations that follow have saved both me and my clients an enormous amount of grief.
1. What Should Someone Be Able to Do on This Site That They Can't Do Now?
Not "what should it look like" — what should it actually let people do. Book something? Buy something? Find your phone number in under five seconds on a mobile screen? Read your last six months of blog posts? The answer completely changes what we're actually building, and "make it look more professional" on its own tells me almost nothing useful.
2. Who's Actually Going to Update This After Launch?
This single question has saved more projects than any other. If the answer is "no one, really," we build differently than if it's "my assistant will add new products weekly." A beautiful site nobody can maintain becomes an outdated site within a year, and an outdated site does more damage to a business's credibility than no site at all in some cases.
3. What's the Actual Budget, Not the Hoped-For One?
Uncomfortable question, necessary conversation. I'd rather know upfront that we're working with a tighter budget so I can suggest a smart, phased approach — get the essentials live now, add the fancier features in round two — than build half of an ambitious vision and leave a client with something unfinished because the money ran out partway through a build that should never have started at that scope.
4. What Happens on Mobile?
More than half the traffic to most small business sites I build is on a phone, and in plenty of industries it's considerably more than that. Every design decision gets stress-tested against "does this still work and look good on a phone screen, on an average connection, for someone in a hurry?" If a feature only shines on a large desktop monitor, I want to know that going in, not discover it after launch when the bounce rate tells the story for us.
5. What's Already Working That We Shouldn't Touch?
Clients often come to me wanting "a complete redesign" when actually their current site has one or two things — a particular page, a specific call-to-action, an existing reputation in search results — that are quietly doing real work and shouldn't be thrown out with everything else. I always ask what's currently bringing in enquiries, so we protect it rather than accidentally wrecking it in the process of making everything else better.
Why This Takes Longer Than People Expect
Some clients are a little surprised that getting a quote involves a proper conversation rather than a same-day price over email. I understand the instinct to want speed, but a quote built on five minutes of guesswork is really just an estimate with extra confidence attached. The conversation itself usually surfaces things the client hadn't fully articulated yet, even to themselves — which, honestly, is half the value of working with someone rather than just picking a template and going it alone.
If you're shopping around for website work and the person quoting you doesn't ask anything like these five questions, that's worth noticing. It's not a guarantee of a bad outcome, but it's a reasonable early warning sign.