Loopio, a company that sells RFP software, reports that organisations respond to only 55% of the requests for proposal they receive, and spend 33 hours on average on each one they do answer. Those figures span industries, not only web agencies, but the lesson carries: a website redesign brief template exists to put your project in the half that gets a considered answer. Agencies quote what they can see and pad what they cannot.
This page is the template: fourteen questions in four groups, why the agency needs each answer, and how each answer changes the price and the timeline. The numbers come from Loopio, Databox, Google, Nielsen Norman Group, WebAIM and Webflow; the questions are the ones we would ask before quoting a marketing-site redesign.
Brief, questionnaire or RFP: which one you need
The three words get used interchangeably but do different jobs. A brief is the document you write. A questionnaire is the agency's list of questions, which you fill in after the first call. An RFP is a formal brief with a submission process, scoring and a deadline, usually because procurement requires one.
| Document | Who writes it | When it fits | Typical length | Main risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Website redesign brief | The client | One to five agencies, informal selection | Two to four pages | Too vague to price |
| Redesign questionnaire | The agency, filled in by the client | After a first call with a shortlisted agency | One to three pages of answers | Answers only what that agency asked |
| Website redesign RFP | The client, often with procurement | Public bodies, larger firms, formal scoring | Ten pages or more with appendices | Prescribes a solution before discovery |
Source: Octo Agency; RFP response data from Loopio, 2026
For most B2B marketing teams the brief is enough. If procurement insists on an RFP, put the fourteen questions below into it as the scope section and keep the legal and scoring material in appendices.
The website redesign brief template, question by question
Copy the fourteen questions into a document and answer each in a short paragraph. Where you do not know the answer, write "not known" and say who would know. An honest gap is easier to price than a guess.
Questions 1 to 4 cover goals and the baseline.
1. Why are you redesigning now, and what has to be measurably better? Give three to five goals with a number on each: more demo requests, a lower cost per lead from paid traffic, a site the marketing team can edit without a developer. "Looks dated" is a reason, not a goal. If the honest answer is that the site works but looks old, say so: it may be a refresh rather than a redesign, which our guide on deciding between a rebuild, a redesign or a refresh covers.
2. What does the current site do today, in numbers? Twelve months of sessions, leads by source and the top twenty pages by traffic. Check the GA4 data retention setting first: Google Analytics Help says standard properties keep 2 or 14 months for explorations and funnel reports, the ones a before-and-after comparison uses, and raising it applies to data not yet deleted.
3. Who is the site for, and what should they do on it? Name the two or three buyer types and the one action that counts as a conversion for each.
4. What is not changing? Brand guidelines, the domain, the product names, the positioning, any page legal has already approved. Fixed constraints are cheap to work within and expensive to discover in week three.
Questions 5 to 8 cover content and structure.
5. How many pages does the site have, and how many will the new one have? A rough count by type is enough: service pages, case studies, blog posts, landing pages, legal pages. Nielsen Norman Group calls the full list a content inventory and the judgement on it, keep, update or remove, a content audit. The audit can wait; the page count cannot.
6. Which pages earn traffic or links today? Google's site-move guidance says to collect old URLs from sitemaps, analytics, server logs and the links report in Search Console, and to keep redirects in place generally for at least a year. Databox found 40.15% of companies delay a redesign over SEO concerns. Listing the pages with the most organic traffic and backlinks makes every agency price the URL map rather than discover it.
7. Who writes the copy, and does it exist yet? Say whether copy will be supplied final, supplied as a draft, or needs writing from scratch, and for how many pages. Our website redesign cost guide splits prices by who writes the copy because quotes vary most on this line.
8. Which content repeats? Case studies, team members, locations, integrations, resources, job listings. Each becomes a CMS collection with its own template and fields. Give a count per type and the number you expect in two years. Platform limits matter here: Webflow's Premium site plan lists up to 20,000 CMS items and 40 collections, which is plenty for most marketing sites and tight for a large resource library.
Questions 9 to 11 cover the platform and integrations.
9. Is the platform fixed, or open? If the CMS is decided, say which and why. If it is open, say what the marketing team must do without a developer. We build marketing sites in Webflow and applications in Next.js, so our own answer to an open question leans that way, and a brief that leaves the platform open will get each agency's preference back.
10. What has to connect to the site? CRM and form routing, marketing automation, analytics and tag manager, consent management, chat, scheduling, product sign-up or single sign-on. List each with the account owner; we would expect an integration with ready access to take far less time than one where nobody knows who holds the login.
11. What accessibility, language and legal requirements apply? WebAIM's 2026 scan of the top million home pages found detectable WCAG 2 failures on 95.9% of them, with low-contrast text on 83.9%. If you need WCAG 2.2 AA conformance, say so, because testing to a standard costs more than "we will check it". Say how many languages the site needs at launch and later; on Webflow, extra locales are a paid add-on. Note any legal review needed before launch.
Questions 12 to 14 cover decisions, budget and time.
12. Who approves copy, who approves design, and how quickly? Name one person for each. Our post Why a marketing site takes four weeks, not four months puts the usual slip at about two weeks of building and fourteen weeks of waiting for decisions. With one copy approver and one design approver on 30-minute review calls, our process runs in four weeks; without them we plan for eight.
13. What is the budget range? Give a range, not a ceiling you keep secret. Databox's 2024 survey found 50% of companies thought a redesign should cost less than $10,000 and just over 30% thought $10,000 to $20,000. A range lets each agency tell you what fits inside it.
14. What is the launch date, and what drives it? A product launch, a funding announcement, a trade show and "end of quarter" are different kinds of deadline. Say which dates are fixed and which are hopes. Also say who edits the site after launch, which decides how much training the agency prices.
How each answer moves the quote
When two quotes for the same brief are far apart, the agencies have usually assumed different answers to questions the brief left blank. This table shows which answers push price and timeline, and which way.
| Question | Answer that lowers cost or time | Answer that raises cost or time |
|---|---|---|
| 5. Page count | Under 15 pages, mostly templated | Dozens of unique layouts |
| 6. Pages with traffic | Few ranking pages, simple URL map | Hundreds of URLs to map and redirect |
| 7. Copy | Final copy supplied before design | All copy written from scratch |
| 8. Repeating content | Two or three collections, items supplied | Many collections, agency migrates items |
| 9. Platform | Fixed and matches the agency's stack | Open, or a platform the team must learn |
| 10. Integrations | Forms to one CRM, access ready | Several systems, unknown owners |
| 11. Requirements | Single language, no formal audit | Several locales, WCAG 2.2 AA testing |
| 12. Approvals | One copy and one design approver | Committee review with rounds of comments |
| 14. Date | Flexible, driven by readiness | Fixed date with content still unwritten |
Source: Octo Agency estimating practice; platform limits from Webflow pricing, 2026
None of the expensive answers is wrong. A brief that admits a bigger project up front gets quotes you can compare.
What a good brief leaves out
A brief describes the problem and the constraints. It should not describe the design. The GOV.UK Service Manual warns against starting discovery with a pre-defined solution and says to reframe it as a problem to solve. The same applies to a redesign brief: "we need a hero video and a mega menu" closes options an agency might have argued against.
Leave out a list of competitor sites you like, unless you say what you like about each one. Leave out an eighty-item questionnaire: Loopio's figures show teams already spend 33 hours per RFP and answer only 55% of those they receive. And leave out a fixed page list unless the content audit behind it is done; a page count by type with "to be confirmed" is more honest.
Do include what you have already tried. If the last redesign launched two years ago and leads fell, say so. Orbit Media's review of 50 leading marketing sites put their average time between redesigns at two years and one month, so a site that age is not unusual, and the agency needs to know what the last project got wrong.
How to use this template
Answer the fourteen questions in a short document, attach the traffic export and a page count by type, and send the same brief to every agency on the shortlist. Ask each to list the assumptions behind its quote. Once you pick an agency, the brief becomes the first input to the website redesign project plan template, and the website redesign checklist covers what to verify between kick-off and the 30-day review.
On the USLege redesign, the first version shipped in under a month and replaced a four-page site that has since grown past 500 pages, which is the argument for settling question 8 on repeating content before the build starts. We quote each redesign per project once the page count, the copy plan and the integrations are known. Our website redesign service page explains how we scope one from a brief like this.
