A proposal in the client's own branding

After launch, the owner asks what it would take to add the two things left for later: cake orders and paying online. She wants it in writing. A proposal in her own brand reads like her project, not a template. Here's how to build one, and send it as a page and a PDF.

Start from her live site, not from memory or a screenshot. A short script opens the home page and reads the styles the browser actually used: the green of the order button, the paper and text colors, the heading brown, the gold, and the two typefaces. It saves them as tokens, each with where it came from, so the proposal uses her green and not a near miss. The proposal's stylesheet uses nothing else.

The page opens with her as the client and you as the sender. Then the problem as she'd put it: cakes sell in the shop but can't be ordered, and every order is paid at pickup. Then the approach, in two sentences she could say back to you. Scope names what's in and what isn't. Delivery isn't in, and neither is wholesale ordering. What you leave out keeps the price true.

Then the price, with what it assumes: the head baker sends the cake list, and the owner picks the payment service. These figures are illustrative, for this lesson, not a market rate. Working out a real price is its own lesson. Terms say when you're paid, how long the offer stands, and how a change gets priced. Then what you need from them, with a name on each. How much notice a cake needs is still open, so the page says so, in words.

It's in her colors, so make clear who it's from: your name at the top and in the footer, and a line saying it isn't a page of her website. It goes online only so she can open it on her phone, so it gets the same safeguards as a spec demo. Check them on the link: the noindex header is there, and there's no preview tag. One bracket is left, the date the offer runs to. Fill it in and search again: nothing.

Some owners file a proposal or forward it, so send a PDF too. Make it from the same page, so the two never disagree. A print stylesheet sets the paper size and keeps each section in one piece, and a short script prints the page to a file: two pages, letter size. Then open it and read it as she will: her colors and type, the illustrative label still beside the price, and your name at the foot of both pages.

A proposal in the client's brand reads like their project. Take the brand from their live site, cover the problem, scope, price and terms, make clear it comes from you, and print the PDF from the same page.