For most businesses, a new website is a decision made once every few years. Quotes look alike, prices vary widely, and the differences are rarely explained. Here are 9 questions to ask before you choose who builds your site.
1. Template or custom-built?
Templates start fast but usually load dozens of features you never use, which means slower pages and a risk of breakage with every update. A custom-built site contains only what you need.
Templates are not always wrong; with a very tight budget they can make sense. What matters is knowing exactly what you are being offered.
2. Is it fast on a phone?
Most of your visitors arrive on a phone, and Google ranks sites based on their mobile version. According to Google’s Core Web Vitals, the main content of a page should appear in under 2.5 seconds.
Test a site the company has already built in Google PageSpeed Insights. The result says more than any sales pitch.
3. Who updates the content, and how?
You should not have to call a developer to post an announcement or change a price. Ask whether the site comes with an admin panel that needs no technical knowledge.
4. Is technical SEO built in from the start?
To show up on Google, a few things must be set up correctly in the site’s foundations. They can be added later, but doing it from day one is much easier:
- A unique title and meta description for every page
- A sitemap.xml and robots.txt
- Structured data (schema.org): business details, services, FAQs
- hreflang tags if the site has more than one language
- A single, meaningful H1 heading per page
5. Whose name are the domain, hosting and SSL in?
Your domain should be registered in your own name. A domain registered to a developer or agency can cause serious problems if you ever want to switch providers. An SSL certificate (https) is also a must; browsers mark sites without one as "not secure".
6. Do you get the source code and your data?
Agree in writing that the source code and database belong to you at the end of the project. Otherwise your site cannot be handed over to another team, and you may lose access if you stop paying a monthly fee.
7. Can visitors reach you easily?
A beautiful site that does not bring in customers has missed its purpose. Make sure contact is effortless:
- Does tapping the phone number start a call on mobile?
- Is there a WhatsApp button with a pre-filled message?
- Do form submissions reach your inbox or admin panel?
- Are these clicks measured (e.g. Google Analytics)?
8. What happens after launch?
All software needs updates over time: security patches, new browser versions, changing needs. Agree up front on how bug fixes and maintenance will work after launch.
9. Actually check the references
Click through the sites in the portfolio: do they load, are they fast, do they look right on a phone? If possible, talk to a past client directly. Look for live, working projects, not screenshots.
Asking the right questions protects your budget and gets you a site that works for years. If you would like to talk about your project, we can prepare a quote that answers each of these questions clearly.
Related service
Custom Website Development
Fast, mobile-friendly, SEO-ready websites with an easy admin panel.
Author
Mehmet Salih Yaldız
Full-stack developer and founder of MSY Developer, building websites, management systems, automation and mobile apps since 2021.