Rediseño web
What Should an Agency Proposal Include Before You Sign the Development Contract?
Equipo Artisma
Agencia de Marketing B2B
The proposal your company signed ran two pages: "design and development of a corporate website", a two-month timeline, the total amount and the down payment. Two weeks after the promised date, the agency reports that the product catalog was never included, that the English version is quoted separately and that the third round of changes is billed by the hour. The launch keeps slipping because nobody defined who approved the copy, and when you ask for access to the admin panel you discover that the domain and hosting are registered in the agency's account. The down payment is already spent, the old site is still live and the CEO wants to know why nobody read the proposal more carefully. Every point under dispute today could have been settled on paper before signing.
Before you sign, the proposal should define the scope and deliverables, the timeline with owners, the acceptance criteria, ownership of the domain, code and access, the warranty, maintenance and how changes are handled.
An ambiguous proposal shifts all of the project's risk onto your company
In previous articles we explained which components a complete B2B web redesign project should include and how to choose an agency that understands your industry. This article covers the next step: the document you receive once you have chosen a vendor and are about to sign. That document decides what you can demand during the project, what will count as additional work and what you will keep when the relationship ends.
A vague proposal is comfortable for both parties on signing day, because nobody has to discuss details. The cost shows up later: every difference in interpretation is resolved in favor of whoever has the work in their hands, and it almost always ends in an extra charge, a delay or a feature delivered halfway. A detailed proposal takes longer to prepare and review, and that time is the cheapest investment in the entire project.
Scope and deliverables: the line that decides what becomes "extra" midway through the project
Scope is the section that prevents or triggers the most disputes. It should let someone outside the project read the proposal and know exactly what will be built, with what content and by what date.
The sitemap and the feature list
Ask for the proposal to list the pages the site will have and, ideally, the sections of each one. Next to that list should be the features: the forms and where each one sends its submissions, the integration with your CRM, the virtual assistant, the catalog or product pages, the languages, the blog and the measurement tools. If the CRM integration is included, the proposal should name the system; if there is an English version, it should clarify whether it includes the translation or only the structure to publish it.
Content, images and explicit exclusions
The proposal should state who writes the copy, who supplies the photography and who loads the content into the site. It should also include an exclusions section listing what the agency will leave out of this price. That section tends to make the buyer uncomfortable because it points out what is missing, and that is exactly why it keeps the phrase "that was never included" from coming up halfway through the project. A proposal without exclusions leaves everything it is silent about open to interpretation.
A timeline without owners lets the launch slip every week
A total deadline with no stages is a promise that is hard to enforce. What lets you know in time whether the project is on track is a timeline with milestones, a concrete deliverable at each milestone and owners on both sides.
Milestones, deliverables and linked payments
A healthy structure divides the project into recognizable stages, for example site architecture, design, content, development, testing and launch, with a date and a deliverable for each one. If there is a down payment, it pays to tie the following payments to milestone approvals rather than calendar dates; that way each payment corresponds to progress your team has already seen and accepted, and the schedule stops being a debate about perceptions.
What depends on your team and the deadlines for approval
Many delays originate on the client side: access that takes a while to arrive, copy nobody approves, a low-resolution logo. A good proposal acknowledges this and puts it in writing. At Artisma we ask from the start for temporary access to your DNS and your CRM so we can integrate the site, along with your brand guidelines and the copy or media files that will appear on the site. The proposal should also set how many review rounds each stage includes, who at your company has the final say and how quickly that person commits to responding. If that name and that deadline are missing, approving a single page can take longer than designing it.
Acceptance criteria: the test that ends the debate over whether the site is finished
"Finished" means different things to the people building the site and the people paying for it. Acceptance criteria turn that word into a list of tests the site must pass before launch and before the final payment. A serious proposal includes something like this:
The site displays and works correctly on phones, tablets and desktop computers, in the browsers your market uses.
Every form and every contact button delivers the message where it should go, whether that is the sales team's email or the CRM, with complete data.
Pages load quickly on mobile, according to a public, repeatable measurement such as Google's PageSpeed Insights.
The old site's URLs redirect to their new equivalents, and search engines can crawl and index the pages.
Analytics records visits and conversions from launch day.
With these criteria, delivery stops being a debate about taste and becomes a verification. In our projects the measurement tools are active from launch: we measure the site's performance before the redesign, measure it again afterward and review those numbers with you.
Domain, code and access: what should be in your company's name
This section rarely appears in short proposals, and it is the one that matters most the day you want to change vendors. Before you sign, the proposal should answer three questions in writing.
Whose name the domain and DNS are registered under
The domain is your company's address on the internet and should be registered in your company's name, with access for someone on your team. The same applies to the DNS, which determine where your site and your email point. At Artisma we use your current domain and you keep full control of your DNS; ask any agency you work with for that same condition.
What rights you will have over the design and the code
The proposal should state whether the design and code become your company's property, whether you receive a license to use them or whether the site lives on a platform owned by the agency. It should also clarify which third-party licenses are used (templates, plugins, fonts, stock photography), whose name they are purchased under and who pays for their renewal. Any of these options can be reasonable if you know about it before signing and know what you would receive if the relationship ends: files, a database backup, content or only the domain.
Measurement and business accounts
Google Analytics, Search Console, your Google Business Profile and the CRM hold your site's commercial history. It is best to create them in your company's name, with the agency as an invited user. If the agency opens them under its own account and the relationship ends, your company can lose years of data overnight.
Warranty, maintenance and changes: the points that decide the real cost after signing
The development price is only part of what your company will pay for the site. What happens after launch, and how changes are handled during the project, defines a large share of the total cost.
Warranty against defects and how long it lasts
The proposal should define a period after launch during which the agency fixes functional defects at no cost, and it should distinguish a defect (a form that stops sending, a page that breaks on mobile) from an improvement or a new request. When that distinction is missing, every fix turns into a negotiation.
Hosting, maintenance and support
Ask what the post-launch stage includes: where the site is hosted, who applies security updates, who makes backups, how quickly support responds and how much each service costs. At Artisma, once the redesign is finished we present the monthly support options, which include web hosting, active analytics and the virtual assistant, and which can be expanded with modules such as the weekly SEO blog, Google Ads campaigns or a custom CRM.
The procedure for scope changes
Every project changes along the way: a new product line appears, leadership asks for an additional section or the sales team spots a frequent question that deserves its own page. The proposal should describe how each change is handled: a written request, an estimate of the cost and the impact on the delivery date, and approval from your company before the work is done. With that procedure, every change becomes an informed decision; without it, the change arrives as an unexpected invoice at the end of the project.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the proposal replace the contract?
It depends on how it is formalized. Many agencies use the signed proposal as the main document and others attach it to a services contract. Either way, the contract should explicitly reference the proposal, so the scope, timeline and exclusions carry the same weight as the payment terms.
What should I do if the agency resists detailing exclusions or acceptance criteria?
Ask for them in writing as a condition for signing. An agency with a clear process can quickly describe what it delivers, what it leaves out and how each stage is approved; reluctance to put it on paper usually foreshadows disputes during the project.
Is it normal to pay a down payment before starting?
Yes, it is common practice in web projects, because the agency reserves its team and starts research from day one. The recommended approach is to tie the remaining payments to approved milestones, so each payment corresponds to progress your team has already reviewed.
If you have a proposal on the table and still do not know what you will be able to demand if the project falls behind or changes course, the time to clarify it is before you sign. Request a diagnosis of your site at https://www.artismamkt.com and we will show you the scope, deliverables and terms your project needs so the price you sign is the price you pay.