The Business Website
Buyer's Guide
12 questions to ask any web design agency before you sign — pricing models, ownership, timelines, and the red flags that predict a painful project.
Buying a website is a one-time decision with a multi-year impact. Most business owners compare price and portfolio and skip the questions that actually determine whether the project goes smoothly.
This free guide gives you those questions, plus a plain-English breakdown of one-time vs. pay-monthly pricing and the ownership checklist that keeps you in control of your own site.
What This Solves
Agency proposals are hard to compare because they describe different things in similar language. This guide gives you the questions that make the differences visible before you sign.
- Proposals that are hard to compare on anything but price
- Unclear ownership of the site, code and accounts after launch
- Pricing and timeline surprises that appear mid-project
- Supplier red flags that are easy to miss at the proposal stage
What the guide covers
A screening list covering scope, process, revisions and support. Asking the same twelve questions of every agency turns incomparable proposals into a like-for-like comparison.
Both models are legitimate and they suit different situations. The guide explains what each typically includes, what it usually excludes, and which questions expose the difference.
Who owns the domain, the code, the content and the analytics accounts, and what happens to each if you leave. Worth settling in writing before work starts, not after.
The patterns that tend to precede a difficult engagement — vague scope, no named contact, unclear revision limits — and how to raise them while you still have leverage.