How I scope a four-week website

The four-week website is our core product. A fixed timeline, fixed price, and a clear brief are what make it work. Here's the exact process.

The 90-minute scoping call

The call has four sections. We don't use a slide deck. We use a shared doc that becomes the brief.

1. Business context (20 min). What do they actually sell? Who buys it? What's the current site missing? We're listening for the gap between how they describe the business and how a customer would.
2. Goals (15 min). What does success look like in six months? Specific numbers when possible. 'More enquiries' is not a goal; '40% more contact form completions' is.
3. Technical scope (25 min). Page list, CMS requirements, integrations (CRM, booking tools, forms), existing brand assets, hosting situation.
4. Timeline and sign-off (30 min). When do they need it live? Who has final approval? What could delay sign-off? We surface the slow points before they happen.

The brief

We send the brief the same evening. It's a shared Notion doc: one paragraph on the business, one on goals, a page list with complexity notes (simple / standard / complex), integrations, timeline milestones, and what's out of scope.

Out-of-scope is the most important section. It prevents scope creep before the contract. 'Custom illustration, product photography, third-party API development' being explicitly excluded means there's no ambiguity later.

The estimate

We send the estimate the next morning, never same day. Overnight gives us time to review the brief without the energy of the call in the room.

The format: a fixed price with the page list attached. No hourly rates. No itemised breakdown by task—clients fixate on line items and start trading. The number is the number.

“The estimate is a test of how much you understood the brief. If the number surprises the client, the brief wasn't clear enough.”

What the four weeks contain

• Week 1: Design direction, homepage concept, brand token decisions.
• Week 2: Inner pages, CMS structure, content templates.
• Week 3: Build, integrations, first review round.
• Week 4: Revisions (one round), QA, deploy prep, handover.

The constraint is intentional. Four weeks is short enough that everyone stays focused. Long enough to do the work properly.