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How to write an ecommerce project brief agencies can quote from
The eight things every agency needs before they can give you a real number — and the three things you should leave out.
Vague briefs get vague quotes, and vague quotes get renegotiated halfway through the build. This is the checklist we use when reading briefs for the matching service.
Include these eight things
1. What you sell, and to whom
Two sentences. Category, price point, B2C or B2B or both, and where your customers are. This determines who’s even a candidate — an agency that has never touched wholesale pricing shouldn’t be quoting your B2B portal.
2. Your current platform and version
“Shopify” is not enough. Shopify vs Shopify Plus changes what’s possible at checkout. Magento 1 vs Adobe Commerce is a different project entirely. If you’re not launched yet, say so — that’s a much easier brief.
3. The systems it has to talk to
The single most important line in your brief. ERP, PIM, 3PL, accounting, email, reviews, subscriptions, tax, loyalty, POS. Name the actual products. “We use an ERP” tells an agency nothing; “NetSuite, and it’s the source of truth for inventory” tells them everything.
4. Catalogue shape
Number of SKUs, and whether they’re simple or configurable. Mention anything unusual: per-customer pricing, made-to-order, bundles, kits, serialised inventory, restricted products.
5. Traffic and revenue
Monthly sessions, monthly revenue, and your peak. Agencies need this to size the infrastructure and to know how much QA is proportionate. It also tells them whether you’re a fit — plenty of good agencies decline work under a threshold, and you want that decline early rather than after three calls.
6. What’s actually wrong
Not the solution you’ve imagined. The symptom. “Mobile conversion is half desktop”, “we can’t launch a new collection without a developer”, “checkout drops 40% at shipping”. Agencies solve problems better than they implement your diagnosis.
7. Budget range
Yes, really. Withholding it does not get you a better price — it gets you a quote pitched at a scope you didn’t want. A range is fine. “$30k–$50k, could stretch for the right team” is a perfect answer and immediately filters out both the $5k theme shops and the $200k consultancies.
8. Timeline and what’s driving it
“Before Black Friday” is a real constraint. “Q2” is not. If there’s a contract expiring, a rebrand launching or a warehouse move, say so — deadlines with a reason get taken seriously.
Leave these out
A feature wishlist. Twenty bullet points of functionality invites agencies to price each one rather than solve the underlying problem, and it anchors the project on your first idea rather than their tenth.
Design direction. “Clean and modern” appears in every brief ever written and means nothing. If you have brand guidelines, attach them. Otherwise let the design conversation happen after you’ve picked a team.
A technology mandate, unless you have a real reason. Specifying “must be headless” before anyone has looked at your catalogue is how a $30k problem becomes a $180k project.
The format
One page. Prose, not a spreadsheet. Send the same brief to everyone so the quotes are comparable — the moment you tell one agency something you didn’t tell the others, you’ve lost the ability to compare.
Three to five agencies is the right number to approach. More than that and you can’t give any of them a proper conversation; fewer and you have no baseline.
If you’d rather not do that legwork, send us the brief instead — we’ll shortlist the three worth your time.