Questions to ask before you hire anyone to build your site

Start with ownership, because that's where people get burned

The most expensive mistake in this whole process isn't overpaying for the build. It's letting the designer register your domain in their name. Years later you want to switch, and the person who technically owns yourcompany.com won't return calls.

So the first question, word for word: "Will the domain and hosting accounts be registered in my name, under my email address, and do I get the logins?" The only acceptable answer is yes. "Don't worry, we handle all that for you" is how businesses lose their own web address.

If you already have a domain, check who owns it right now. Go to lookup.icann.org, type your domain, and look at the registrant and registrar fields. If your old designer's name or company shows up instead of yours, getting that fixed is job one, before any new build starts.

The right setup: the domain lives in a registrar account you created (Cloudflare, Namecheap, and GoDaddy all work), and you grant the designer access to it. Never the reverse.

Ask what it's built on and what you keep if you leave

Second question, word for word: "What platform will my site be built on, and if we stop working together, what exactly do I walk away with?" A good answer names something you could take elsewhere: WordPress (any hosting company can run it), Squarespace or Wix (as long as the account is yours), or custom code with the files handed over at launch.

The answer to walk away from: "our proprietary platform." That usually means your site only exists inside their system, you pay monthly forever, and the day you cancel, the site vanishes. You're renting a billboard, not buying a building.

You can verify what they actually build with. Go to builtwith.com, paste in two or three addresses from their portfolio, and look at the CMS line. It's free for basic lookups, no account needed. If every site runs on the same in-house system you've never heard of, now you know what you'd be signing up for.

Test their portfolio like a customer, not a shopper

Everyone's portfolio looks good in screenshots. You want to know how the sites work for the people who matter: a homeowner on a phone with a problem.

Pick two or three of their portfolio sites and spend ten minutes on each. Open them on your own phone, on cell data, not wifi. Then run each one through pagespeed.web.dev on the Mobile tab. You're not looking for a perfect score, you're looking for a pattern. If every site they've shipped scores under 50 on mobile, yours will too.

Then check whether the sites actually get found. Search Google for what that client sells plus their town, something like "gutter cleaning oconomowoc," and see if the site shows up anywhere on the first page. A designer can't control rankings, but if none of their work is findable, the sites are decoration.

Best reference check available: call one of the portfolio businesses. Owners talk to owners. Ask two things, "would you hire them again?" and "what surprised you after launch?" The second question is where the billing surprises and slow support come out.

• Does the phone number tap to call?
• Does the contact form work, and did anything confirm it sent?
• Does the site load in a few seconds on cell data?
• Can you tell within five seconds what the business does and where?

Pin down three numbers: build, monthly, and exit

There's no standard price for a website, so comparing totals across quotes tells you almost nothing. Compare what's included. Get three numbers in writing before you sign anything.

The build price: what does it cover? Ask for the page count, who writes the words, who supplies photos, how many revision rounds you get, and what happens if you ask for a change after launch.

The monthly price: what exactly does it buy? Hosting and a security certificate should be on the list. Ask how many content edits per month are included and what an extra edit costs. "Maintenance" with no itemized list is a fee, not a service.

The exit price: what does it cost to leave? Ask directly, "if I cancel in a year, what do I pay and what do I keep?" Watch for 12-month minimums with cancellation fees, and for export fees to get your own content back.

Hand them this yes-or-no launch checklist

A pretty homepage is the easy part. The technical basics below are what make the site show up in search and turn visitors into calls, and plenty of builds skip them. Send this list with your request for a quote and ask for a yes or no on each line. Anyone worth hiring answers without flinching.

• Site tested on real phones, with a tap-to-call phone number in the header
• A unique title tag and meta description written for every page, not auto-generated
• LocalBusiness schema markup with your name, address, and phone
• Site linked to your Google Business Profile
• Google Search Console set up under YOUR Google account, with sitemap submitted
• Some form of tracking (Google Analytics or call tracking), also under your account
• HTTPS with an SSL certificate included, not a paid add-on
• Contact form tested end to end, with submissions landing in your inbox

Before final payment, log into these five things yourself

The handoff is where good projects go bad. Make the final invoice contingent on you personally logging into each of these, not on the designer promising you can.

One, the domain registrar account, in your name. Two, the hosting account. Three, an administrator login to the site itself (in WordPress that's the Administrator role, not Editor, and you can check under Users in the dashboard). Four, owner access to Google Search Console and whatever analytics they installed. Five, a full backup or export of the site files and content, saved somewhere you control.

Put all five in a password manager the same day. Designers close shop, get acquired, and lose interest in old clients. None of that should be able to take your website with it.