What to ask a website provider

Ownership, first and in writing

The domain must be registered in your business name in an account you control. This is the single most important question and the one most often answered vaguely.

The same applies to hosting, analytics, business profiles and anything else created for the project. Our page on one business, one domain covers why.

Ask what happens to each of those if you stop working together. A provider who has thought about that answers immediately; one who has not is the risk.

Ask for the registrar login details as part of the handover rather than a promise of access. A provider who manages the domain on your behalf is fine; a provider who holds it instead of you is not.

Standards, stated rather than assumed

Will the site pass an accessibility check, and which one. Will headings be in order for a screen reader and an answer engine, will images have descriptions, will forms have labels. These get skipped unless they are asked about.

Ask for a check you can run yourself after delivery. Our site check reports the structural half in one pass, which is a fairer basis than an opinion.

Be careful with anyone who promises compliance with a law. Our page on who is responsible covers why that is not a claim a vendor can make. Nothing here is legal advice.

What happens after launch

Who applies updates, who fixes something broken, how quickly they respond, and what that costs. A project that ends at launch leaves you with a site and nobody to call.

Ask what is included in any monthly fee, specifically. Maintenance means very different things between providers, and the difference usually only becomes clear the first time you need something.

And ask how you make a small change yourself. If the answer is that you cannot, the site will go stale, which costs more than any design decision.

Ask what happens if they stop trading. Every small provider should have an answer, even if it is only that you hold the accounts and could move the site elsewhere tomorrow.

The questions that matter most

The list below is what we would ask before committing to anybody, including ourselves. Any provider worth hiring answers all of them without hesitation.

• Who owns the domain, the code and every account
• What the total cost is per year, including everything recurring
• Which standards the site will meet, and how I can verify it
• Who maintains it, how fast they respond, and at what cost
• What I can change myself without asking
• What I keep if I leave, and how the handover works
• Who else in my trade have you built for

Cost, counted properly

Ask for the annual figure with everything included. Build, hosting, domain, licences, plugins, maintenance and anything that renews. Monthly prices hide a lot of recurring cost.

Ask what happens to the price after the first year, which is where the increase usually sits, and whether the contract renews automatically.

And ask what is chargeable beyond the quote. Extra pages, changes after sign-off and content you supply late are the three that surprise people most often.

Content, and who writes it

Ask specifically who writes the words and how they will learn about your trade. The most common disappointment in website projects is generic copy, and the cause is almost always that nobody asked.

If you are supplying the content, budget your own time for it honestly. Projects stall on content more often than on anything technical.

Our page on describing your business covers what a provider needs from you, whoever is doing the writing.

Ask to read three pages they wrote for somebody else in an unrelated trade. Generic copy is obvious across two of them, and it is the single best predictor of what you will receive.

Answers that should worry you

A promise about rankings, traffic or results in a fixed period. Nobody controls those, and offering them is the clearest signal available about how the rest will go.

Vagueness about ownership, or an explanation of why it is simpler for them to hold the domain. It is simpler, and it is simpler for them rather than for you.

And a refusal to say what happens if you leave. Every honest provider has an answer to that, and the ones who do not have usually not thought about it.