Use a Discovery engagement to front-load critical work and avoid scrambling and desperately throwing resources towards the end of the project.

Even when you make your proposals as specific as possible and layout contingencies for any road bumps that may come up, these projects often seem to go sideways.

The Website Discovery Proposal is essentially a strategy phase that you sell separately from the implementation phase. It informs precisely how much you'll charge during the implementation phase.

You can price Website Discovery engagements anywhere from $5k-$40k, depending on the complexity of the website project. However, what matters most is that you treat it as an opportunity to turn every stone and to ask questions on all matters, including the tech, content, email, templates, design approach, migration, and more.

It is not unusual to see clients with small budgets agree to double budgets on later phases after a successful Discovery Engagement.

The key is to engage the clients well during the workshops and show them all the thinking and planning that goes into a successful website build.