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I want a quote. What do I need?

One of the first questions from our clients is "What will this cost?". What is needed to write a proper quote?

Depending on the size and complexity of a site, the following information will be helpful for Versa Studio or other design firms to provide you with a quote:

Site map

A site map may be in simple hierachical format, using bulleted lists and indentation to show the structure of the site. This works very well. Alternately, making a visual site map with a tool like Gliffy (free) or Microsoft Visio works well.

Feature list

What amounts to a 'feature' is not clearly defined. However, Versa Studio considers a feature to be anything that is not simple static content. Example features include:

Articles
Blog
Documents
E-commerce
Forms for contact, quote request, or other purposes
Physical products (how many?)
Digital content (what kind and how many?)
Email newsletter
Event calendar
Event registration
Facebook Friends bar
Image gallery
Link management (dozens or hundreds of links, ordered by category)
RSS Feeds, incoming (external, pulled from other sites in to yours)
RSS Feeds, outgoing (your site’s content, syndicated to other sites)
Search
Social media sharing links, i.e., Tweet, post to Facebook, etc.
Staff directory
Twitter Feed

List of similar sites

Finally, we like to receive a list of at least two or three sites you like, whether for style, structure, or other elements. This helps us narrow down what kind of look at feel you want.

This is just a start

You can read all about this and see a real site map and feature list in our free web site planning guide, which you will probably want to read no matter the size of your project. For sites with quite a bit of content, say, hundreds of pages instead of dozens, more information is required, including a needs assessment.