Why does a brief get you a better quote?
A website development questionnaire is a short set of questions you answer before asking anyone for a price. When three studios receive the same written answers, their quotes describe the same project, and you can compare them line by line.
It matters because a developer who has to guess will either pad the quote to cover the unknowns or quote low and add charges later.
A good brief also shortens the first meeting. Instead of spending an hour explaining your business, you spend it on the decisions that actually change cost: how many pages, which languages, whether you take payments online, and who supplies the text and photos.
This template is lighter than a formal request for proposal. It suits a five-page clinic site as well as a store with a few hundred products. Each group below explains why the questions matter, and the full list sits near the end, ready to copy. If you are replacing an existing site, read our complete guide to redesigning a business website alongside it, because a redesign adds questions about what must be kept.
Your business and goals
Start with what the site has to do for the business, not how it should look. A developer plans very different pages for a restaurant that wants table bookings than for a B2B supplier that wants procurement managers to download a spec sheet.
Questions to answer
- What does your business sell, and to whom, in two or three sentences?
- What is the one action you most want a visitor to take: call, message on WhatsApp or LINE, book, buy, or send an enquiry form?
- How will you judge the site a success after six months? More enquiries, fewer phone calls asking the same questions, online sales, or staff recruitment?
- Which three competitor or peer websites do you like, and what exactly do you like about each?
- Is anything changing soon, such as a new branch, a new product line or a rebrand?
The last question catches a common problem. If a new logo or company name is coming in the next few months, build around it now rather than paying twice; our checklist for updating a site after a rebrand lists what usually needs to change.
Be honest about the success measure. "Look more professional" is a fair goal, but it does not tell anyone where to put the effort. "Get hotel guests to book direct instead of through an agency" does.
Who is the site for, and in which languages?
In Bangkok the language question changes the size of the job more than almost anything else. A Thai-only site, an English-only site and a full bilingual or multilingual website are three different quotes, because every page, form, email notification and error message exists once per language.
Questions to answer
- Who are your main visitors: Thai customers, expatriates, tourists, overseas buyers, or a mix? Roughly what share of each?
- Do you need Thai, English or both? Should both versions be complete, or is one a shorter summary?
- Are any other languages likely later, such as Chinese or Japanese?
- Who decides to buy from you, and who only researches? A clinic patient may be a different person from the family member who books.
- How do customers usually contact you today: phone, LINE, WhatsApp, email or walk-in?
Assume most visitors arrive on a phone. Many Thai users move from a search result straight into a chat app, so tell the developer which messaging apps your staff actually answer. A LINE button that nobody monitors does more harm than having no button at all.
Pages and features
Page count and features are where most price differences come from, so list them even if the list is rough. A developer can suggest a better website structure later; what they need now is scope.
Pages
- Which pages do you already know you need? A typical small business list is home, about, services, contact and perhaps a blog.
- Does each service, branch, room type or treatment need its own page?
- Will you publish articles or news regularly, and who will write them?
Features
- Forms: a simple contact form, a quote request with file upload, or a job application?
- Booking: appointments, tables or rooms? Does it need to connect to a system you already use?
- Online sales: how many products, with sizes or colours, and how will you ship? Thai couriers such as Thailand Post, KEX Express (formerly Kerry Express), Flash Express or J&T each handle rates and tracking differently.
- Payments: PromptPay QR, cards, bank transfer, cash on delivery, or a mix? Do you need e-Tax invoices?
- Chat: WhatsApp, LINE, or both, and on which pages?
If you are unsure whether a request is a design task or a build task, our explainer on how web design differs from web development helps you word it. Features, more than looks, move the price, which is why our website prices in Thailand page groups packages by what they include.
Content and technical details
Late content is the most common reason a website launch slips. Deciding now who writes, translates and photographs saves weeks later.
Content questions
- Who writes the Thai copy and who writes the English? Will one be translated from the other, and by whom?
- Do you have your own photos of the premises, team and products, or will you use stock images or arrange a shoot?
- For a store: is product data (names, prices, descriptions, weights, images) in a spreadsheet, another platform, or nowhere yet?
- Who at your company approves text before it goes live?
Technical questions
- Do you have a current website? What is its address, and what platform does it run on?
- Who owns the domain name, and do you have the login for the registrar?
- Where is the site hosted now, and who pays for it?
- Does your company email run on the same domain? Moving a site carelessly can break email, so say so.
- Does the site need to connect to anything: a booking engine, an accounting tool, a CRM or a stock system?
If an existing site already brings in search traffic, mention it clearly. Old pages need redirects to their new addresses, a process covered in our guide to keeping rankings through a redesign.
PDPA, budget and timeline
Personal data
Thailand's Personal Data Protection Act B.E. 2562 (PDPA) applies to the names, phone numbers and emails your forms collect, and to the tracking tools on your pages. Tell the developer what data you collect and why, so the site can carry a cookie consent banner, a privacy notice and consent wording on forms.
- What personal data will forms collect, and where should it go: an inbox, a spreadsheet or a CRM?
- Do you already have a privacy notice, in Thai and English?
- Will you run analytics or advertising pixels that need cookie consent?
Budget
Give a range, even a wide one. A range lets a developer propose the right scope instead of guessing. For reference, our packages start from THB 10,000 for a Starter site of up to five pages, from THB 30,000 for a Business site of up to fifteen pages in English and Thai, and from THB 50,000 for an e-commerce store on Shopify or WooCommerce. These are indicative one-time prices; the written quote sets the final figure.
Timeline and decisions
- Is there a real deadline, such as an opening date, a trade fair or a festival sales period?
- Who signs off the design and the final site, and how many people need to agree?
- Who will update the site after launch: your staff or an outside maintenance service?
A typical project with us takes around 15 days from the agreed brief to launch, as long as your texts and photos are ready at the start. Projects with many approvers tend to run longer, so name one person with the final say.
The full questionnaire to copy
Here is every question in one list. Copy it into an email or a document, answer what you can, and mark the rest "not sure". An honest gap is more useful to a developer than a guess.
- BusinessWhat you sell, to whom, and any changes coming such as a rebrand or new branch.
- Main goalThe one action visitors should take, and how you will measure success after six months.
- ReferencesThree websites you like, and what you like about each.
- AudienceThai, expatriate, tourist or overseas buyers, with a rough share of each.
- LanguagesThai, English or both; full versions or a shorter second language.
- Contact channelsPhone, LINE, WhatsApp or email, and which ones staff actually answer.
- PagesYour list of pages, and whether each service, branch or product needs its own.
- Forms and bookingContact, quote, job or booking forms, and any system they must connect to.
- Online salesNumber of products, variants, shipping by Thai couriers, and e-Tax invoices.
- PaymentsPromptPay QR, cards, bank transfer or cash on delivery.
- ContentWho writes and translates the Thai and English copy, and who approves it.
- Photos and product dataYour own photos, stock images or a shoot; product data in a spreadsheet or not yet.
- Current setupExisting site address and platform, domain login, hosting and company email.
- IntegrationsBooking engine, accounting, CRM or stock system.
- PDPAPersonal data collected, where it goes, existing privacy notice, analytics and cookies.
- BudgetA range, even a wide one.
- TimelineAny fixed deadline and the reason for it.
- Decision makersWho signs off, and who maintains the site after launch.
Send it to us
Our quote form follows the same groups as this questionnaire, so the fastest route is to send us your brief through the quote form and paste in any longer answers. You can also message the answers on WhatsApp or call +66 93 004 4098, or email them to service@websitedevelopmentbangkok.com. English or Thai is fine, and attachments such as a product spreadsheet or a sitemap of your old site help.
We read the brief, ask about anything that is unclear, and reply with a written quote that lists the pages, features and price. We are open every day from 10:00 to 19:00 Bangkok time.
Keep your answers once the project starts. The same document becomes the reference for testing before go-live, and our pre-launch checklist for new websites picks up where this questionnaire ends.
Read next
Sources
Builds and ranks the websites: the systems behind the 17 client sites whose Search Console numbers we publish. This guide was written by the Website Development Bangkok team. More about us