Start with ownership
Before you talk about design, color palettes, or launch dates, ask one question: who owns what when this is over?
You should own your domain name, your hosting account, your codebase, and your content. All of it. If an agency registers your domain under their account, you're a hostage. If they build on a proprietary platform that only they can edit, you're paying rent on something you think you bought.
This is more common than you'd expect. A 2023 survey found that 29% of small business owners didn't know who controlled their domain registration.1 That's how you end up in a situation where firing your agency means starting over from zero.
Get it in writing. If they push back on ownership questions, that tells you everything you need to know.
"A new website" is not a scope
The vaguest proposals lead to the ugliest invoices. If someone quotes you a price for "a new website" without specifying what that includes, you're setting yourself up for scope creep, surprise costs, or both.
A real proposal lists deliverables. How many pages? Which pages? Is there a contact form, a booking system, e-commerce? What about mobile design - is that included or an add-on? What CMS will you use to update content after launch? How many rounds of revisions are included before additional charges kick in?
These questions feel tedious. They save you thousands of dollars. The Digital Commerce 360 2024 survey found that 47% of web projects exceed their original budget, and scope ambiguity was the leading cause.2
Ask why they picked the technology
Every agency has a default stack. That's fine - specialization is efficient. But there's a difference between "we chose Next.js because your site needs fast page loads and SEO visibility" and "we use WordPress for everything because that's what we know."
Ask the question directly: why this platform for my project? The answer should reference your business needs, not their internal workflow. If they can't explain the tradeoff between their recommendation and the alternatives, they haven't thought about it.
This matters long-term. The technology choice affects what your site can do in two years, who can maintain it, and how much that maintenance costs. A platform that's cheap to build on but expensive to maintain isn't a deal.
Get the full cost picture
The build price is the number everyone focuses on. It's usually not the number that matters most.
After launch, you'll pay for hosting, domain renewal, SSL certificates, plugin or dependency updates, security monitoring, and content changes. Some agencies bundle this into a monthly retainer. Others hand you the keys and wave goodbye.
Neither is inherently wrong, but you need to know which one you're getting. Ask: what does ongoing support cost? What's the response time if something breaks? Is there a separate rate for emergency fixes? If the answer is vague or nonexistent, that's a gap you'll feel the first time your site goes down on a weekend.
Budget 15-20% of your build cost annually for maintenance and updates. If nobody's mentioned this, bring it up yourself.
A pretty portfolio does not mean much
Agencies live and die by their portfolio pages. And those pages are curated to show the best screenshots, not the full story.
A screenshot tells you someone can make a nice-looking homepage. It doesn't tell you whether the site loads in under 3 seconds, whether it actually converts visitors into customers, or whether the client was happy with the process. Ask for references. Ask about results - traffic increases, lead generation, conversion rates. If they can only talk about aesthetics, they're designers, not strategists. That's fine for a visual refresh, but if you need leads and conversions, you need someone who measures those.
If they won't connect you with a past client, there's usually a reason.
Red flags that should stop the conversation
Some of these are obvious in hindsight but easy to miss when you're excited about getting a new site:
- No written contract. Verbal agreements are worth exactly nothing when something goes wrong.
- The proposal is a single page with a price and a timeline but no detail on deliverables.
- They won't show you work for businesses similar to yours. Every agency says they can handle any industry. That's not how expertise works.
- They get defensive when you ask about ownership, code access, or switching providers.
- The timeline is unrealistic in either direction. A custom site in two weeks is a template with your logo on it. Six months for a 5-page site means they're juggling too many projects.
Communication tells you a lot
Talent doesn't matter if you can't get someone on the phone. Ask how communication works before you sign. Weekly check-ins? A shared project board? Email-only? Find out who your point of contact is - the person who sold you the project is rarely the person building it.
Ask about revisions specifically. How many rounds are included? What counts as a "round"? What's the turnaround time on feedback? Agencies that are vague about this will ghost you when you're three weeks past the deadline and still waiting on changes.
Pay attention to how the first few conversations go. If the sales process is confusing, the build will be worse.