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Use AI to work out how your website should be built.

Hire a professional, or build it yourself? Choosing between agencies, freelancers and platforms involves a lot of jargon, and it's hard to be sure without technical knowledge.

An AI assistant can weigh the options against what your business needs, and it does this better with a detailed prompt. Answer a few questions and we'll write one for you.

This page gives you a prompt, not an answer. You paste it into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, with or without your quotes, and the assistant does the analysis. The prompt supplies the questions to ask.

  1. Answer a few questions

    It takes about a minute. Tell us whether you're hiring someone, building it yourself or still deciding, and a little about your business.

  2. Copy the prompt we write

    It appears as you answer, built around your project. It's long because it includes the questions a professional would ask, many of which are easy to overlook.

  3. Paste it in, with your quotes if you have any

    Paste it into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. The free version of each is usually enough. The assistant asks you about your business first, then works through the options and suggests what to ask before you commit.

How are you thinking of getting the site built?
What does your business do?

What the business does, or what you want the site to do. The more specific you are, the more useful the questions you get back.

Will the site sell online?
Does it need to do anything beyond pages and a contact form?
Is this a new site, or replacing one?
How many quotes are you comparing?

Optional. A promise made on the phone, a price that was mentioned but never written down, a deadline someone agreed to. The assistant will put these on the list of things to get in writing.

Include doing it yourself, for reference?

Your prompt

Copy this, open ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, paste it in and attach your quotes. It will ask you a few questions about the business before it compares anything.

I'm choosing who should design and build a new website for my business, and I'd like
your help comparing my options. Please be even-handed. I want a clear-eyed read, not
encouragement.

ABOUT THE BUSINESS
We are a professional services firm.
The site does not need to sell online.

WHAT I'M WEIGHING UP
I have two quotes, which I'll attach. Call them Quote A, Quote B and so on, in the order
I attach them.

Use only what the quotes actually say. Where one is silent on something, tell me it is
silent rather than filling the gap with an assumption.

BEFORE YOU ANALYSE ANYTHING, INTERVIEW ME
Ask me these one or two at a time, and wait for my answers:
- Where do I expect the business to be in two years, and what might the site need to
  do then that it does not need to do now?
- Who will edit the site day to day, and how confident are they?
- What has frustrated me about a website before - mine or anyone else's?
- Is there anything this site has to do that is unusual for my line of work?
- Is there a date this needs to be live by, and what happens if it slips?
- What is my budget for this, and is that a firm ceiling or a rough figure?
- Which matters more to me right now: launching quickly, or being able to change
  things freely later?

Then ask me who is providing each of these, because they are the parts that get assumed
rather than agreed, and any of them can quietly become my problem:
- the words on every page
- photography, and whether any stock images are licensed and for how long
- the logo and any brand assets
- the domain name - who buys it, whose name it is in, and who renews it
- email on that domain
- setting the site up to be found in search and by AI assistants
- keeping it updated, backed up and secure once it is live

THEN COMPARE, UNDER THESE HEADINGS
1. What am I actually being offered? Work out from each quote what the site would
   actually be built on - a named platform, a bought theme, or genuinely written from
   scratch - and what that means in practice. Words like custom, bespoke and tailored
   are not answers on their own: if a quote uses them without naming the technology
   underneath, say the quote does not answer this, and do not guess which it means.
2. What is missing from each quote. Go through it against everything I told you above
   about who provides what, and check as well for: who owns the source code and the
   design files; what I can take with me if I leave; who holds the domain, hosting and
   analytics accounts; how many rounds of changes are included; what it costs to run
   from year two onwards; whether search and AI-assistant readiness is included or
   billed separately; what maintenance covers and how fast they respond; whether any
   speed or accessibility commitment is written down; and what happens when I want
   something that was not in the original scope. List what each quote is silent on.
3. Where each option is genuinely stronger. Include building it myself honestly. If a
   platform is the right answer for a business like mine, say so plainly and say why.
4. What each option would make hard later. Concrete examples for my line of work,
   not generalities.
5. The questions I should send back to each supplier before I decide. Write them out
   so I can paste them straight into an email.

RULES
- Show me the trade-offs and what I would be giving up either way, then tell me what
  you would do in my position and what would change your mind. A recommendation you
  can defend is more use to me than a refusal to have a view.
- Do not soften it to be agreeable, and do not assume the dearer option is the better
  one. If two options are effectively equivalent, say so.
- Plain English. If you need a technical term, explain it in the same sentence.

Nothing you type here is sent to us. Your quotes go straight from you to the assistant you choose.

What the prompt asks for

The questions an experienced web developer would ask.

These are the questions an experienced developer asks when reading a website quote. They're what this page adds to the AI assistant you'd use anyway.

It interviews you first
Before it weighs anything up, it asks where you expect the business to be in two years, who will edit the site day to day, your budget and your deadline, and who is providing the words, the photographs and the domain.
It looks for what is missing
Who owns the source code and the design files. What you can take with you if you leave. Who holds the domain and hosting accounts. How many rounds of changes are included. What it costs to run from year two, and whether being found in search is included or billed separately. Many quotes leave out several of these.
It checks the migration
If you already have a site, it checks whether the move is costed and whether a redirect map is included, so pages that currently rank in search keep working. Leaving this out can be one of the most expensive gaps in a quote.
It is told to be even-handed
The prompt asks for a recommendation and for what would change it. It also tells the assistant to say plainly when a platform is the right answer, not to soften its advice to be agreeable, and not to assume the more expensive option is better. You can read the whole prompt in the box before you use it.

The prompt cannot tell you whether you'll enjoy working with someone, whether their previous sites are any good, or whether the person you speak to now will still be there when the project is live. For that, talk to them, and ask them these five questions.

FAQ

Questions about this page.

You can, and this tool is designed to help you do that. The difficult part is knowing what to ask, because the costly problems are often the things a quote does not mention. This page gives you those questions, arranged around your project.

Start with a blank canvas.

Tell us a little about your project, and we'll come back within one working day.