Below are three key elements to a well-formulated website design proposal template.

1. Cover letter

While a cover letter is optional, it’s a nice touch to enhance your proposal template. The goal of a cover letter is to succinctly communicate relevant experience, philosophy, and skills to show prospective clients that you know what you’re doing.

You can either include a cover letter in your website proposal template doc or send it in the body of your email message. Either way, make sure you put your best foot forward to highlight what makes you competent at building websites.

2. Services

Your website development proposal is an opportunity to show clients all of the excellent services you offer to help them achieve their digital goals.

Take the time to map out all of your relevant offerings and even include some additional options that the client didn’t think of but would appreciate.

Detailing your services in your proposal also sets the tone for a new client relationship. Straight off the bat, you’re drawing a line and communicating what you can and can’t do.

This is critical to avoid “scope creep,” where a client continually asks for you to do more work that wasn’t included in the original agreement.

3. Payment terms

As a creative professional or agency, you have a few options when it comes to how to structure your payment terms.

You could charge progress payments, a deposit, upfront fees, or an hourly rate. How you present your payment conditions is entirely depending on your cash flow and type of clients.

As a general rule of thumb, it’s common practice to charge a deposit before the project commences, and the outstanding balance upon completion.

If the website is a small job, you may opt to skip the deposit and charge payment at the end of the project.