A website quote can be one page or ten. Price alone doesn’t tell you much — two quotes for $4,000 can mean completely different things depending on what’s actually inside them. Here’s what a proper quote should spell out, and where the vague ones tend to hide the extra cost.
Number of pages, named
“Website design” isn’t a line item, it’s a category. A proper quote lists the pages: home, about, services, contact, maybe a blog index. If your quote just says “up to 5 pages” without naming them, ask what happens on page 6 — a lot of small businesses discover mid-project that “contact” and “FAQ” both counted against their limit.
Who writes the copy
This is the single biggest source of quote confusion. Some studios include copywriting in the price. Others expect you to supply every word of text, and “design” only covers layout. If your quote doesn’t say explicitly, ask — writing eight pages of business copy from scratch is real work, either yours or theirs, and it should show up in the number somewhere.
Where the images come from
Stock photos, a photoshoot, or photos you already have — all three lead to very different outcomes and very different costs. A studio quoting a fixed price while assuming you’ll supply professional photography is quietly passing a cost (and a delay) back to you. Ask what’s included and what you’re expected to provide.
Whether SEO basics are in scope
A site can look great and still be invisible on Google if nobody set up page titles, meta descriptions, and a sitemap. Some studios treat this as included, baseline work. Others sell it as a separate add-on, sometimes a pricey one. If you’re building a site partly to be found — which is most small businesses — ask directly whether basic technical SEO is in the quote or billed later.
A contact form that actually works
“Contact form” sounds like a given, but check it’s a real one — a form that emails you when someone submits it, with basic spam protection — not a mailto link dressed up to look like a form. Also worth asking: does the quote include setting up email forwarding or a proper business email address, or is that left to you?
Revisions — how many, and what counts
Every studio includes some revision rounds. Few spell out how many, or what happens if you want a bigger change halfway through (a different layout, not just a colour tweak). A quote that names a number — “two rounds of feedback included” — is one that’s thought about where the line is. A quote that’s silent on this tends to have that conversation later, once you’ve already seen a design you don’t love.
Hosting, domain, and who owns what
Some quotes bundle a year of hosting. Others don’t mention it at all, and you find out later that the studio hosts the site on infrastructure only they control — which matters a lot if you ever want to leave. A good quote either names the ongoing hosting cost or tells you plainly that you’ll need to sort your own, and confirms the domain is registered in your name, not theirs.
What happens after launch
A site needs small changes after it goes live — a new price, a fixed typo, an added service. Some quotes include a support period (30 days is common). Others put you straight onto an hourly rate from day one. Neither is wrong, but you want to know which one you’re getting before you sign, not when you email asking for a quick fix and get a bill back.
Timeline, and what it depends on
A number without conditions (“6 weeks”) is less useful than one with them (“6 weeks, assuming content and feedback come back within 3 business days each round”). Most delays on a website build come from the client side — content not supplied, feedback not given — not the studio’s desk. A quote that names what it needs from you, and by when, is one that’s actually trying to hit the date.
The honest read
None of this is about catching a studio out — it’s about being able to compare two numbers on the same terms. A $2,500 quote that excludes copywriting, photography, and SEO isn’t cheaper than a $4,000 quote that includes all three; it’s the same project with $1,500 quietly moved onto your side of the ledger. Ask for the missing pieces before you compare, not after you’ve already picked one.
If you’re getting quotes from studios in Nelson, Blenheim or elsewhere in the Marlborough region, it’s worth asking every studio the same set of questions above — the answers tell you more than the number on the page does.