Written for principals and marketing leads who will live with the decision for the next three years. Eight questions that separate a considered engagement from an expensive one, plus the terms worth reading closely before anything is signed.
The strongest briefs describe a commercial position: who you want to be considered by, what you are currently losing, and what changing perception would be worth. Page counts and feature lists come later. An agency that reshapes your brief before quoting is usually the one thinking properly.
Serious engagements open with a diagnostic: market position, audience, competitor surfaces, existing evidence. If a proposal moves straight to wireframes, you are buying production, not strategy — which is fine, provided you know that is the purchase.
Confirm ownership of design files, code, domain, hosting accounts, analytics and content. Under Australian law copyright in commissioned work does not automatically transfer, so the contract must say it. If the agency retains the platform account, ask exactly how a handover works.
Ask for the twelve-month picture: hosting, licences, plugin renewals, support retainer, content updates, and the hourly rate after launch. A low build price with an expensive tail is common and entirely legal — it just needs to be visible before you sign.
Run two or three of their recent client sites through a public performance test on a phone connection. Check heading structure, alt text and contrast. Craft is verifiable; ask for evidence rather than assurances.
In smaller firms the person who pitches is usually the person who delivers. In larger ones it often is not. Neither is wrong — but ask who holds the work day to day, and how much of their week you actually have.
Most projects stall on copy. Decide early whether the agency writes it, you write it, or a writer is engaged separately, and put that in scope. Unclear content responsibility is the single most common cause of delay.
Look for how variations are priced, what a revision round includes, payment milestones, and how disagreements are resolved. Clear, plainly written terms are a reliable signal about how the engagement will run.
Six signals that reliably predict a difficult engagement.
For a view of who is working in this city and which kind of firm each serves well, read our review of Sydney agencies. For how we work, see our Sydney practice page.