Fourteen questions to ask a website vendor before you sign

Three quotations arrive and none of them can be compared, because each one describes different work in different words. That is fixable. Ask everybody the same questions.

Scope and content

• How many pages, exactly. A number, not a range with the word approximately in front of it.
• Who writes the words. If the answer is content to be provided by client, that work has not been priced and it still has to happen.
• Who takes the photographs. Same trap. Stock images of somebody else’s factory are worse than none.
• Is our full product range included. Getting two hundred products onto pages is the expensive part. Ask whether it is in.

Performance and measurement

• What page weight are you building to. A vendor who answers with a number is quoting for different work than one who says fast loading.
• What load time, on what connection. Ask for a figure on 4G, not on office wifi.
• How will we verify that ourselves. The answer should be a free tool you can run without them.
• What happens to our existing URLs. Every one should get a redirect. This is how you keep the search position you already have.

Ownership and afterwards

• Whose name is the domain registered in. Yours. Always. Check afterwards too.
• What exactly do we receive at the end. Files, accounts, and a handover document, in your company name.
• What does year two cost. Hosting, patching, support. Get the renewal figure now.
• Who answers the phone in eighteen months. And what happens if that person leaves.
• Can we take the site to another vendor. The answer should be an unhesitating yes.
• What do you not do. A vendor who claims to do everything well is telling you something.

How to read the answers

You are not looking for perfect answers. You are looking for specific ones. Somebody who says we usually land around 1.2 megabytes and here is how you check it knows their work. Somebody who says we always optimise for speed does not.

The ownership questions matter most and get asked least. A third of the companies we audit do not control their own domain, and every one of them found out at the worst possible moment.

Written by Sameer Gaikwad, founder of Buildgin. Thirty three years in electrical power systems across global MNCs, now applying the same condition monitoring habit to websites.