- Nine questions, in the order they will matter. The first three are about ownership and they are the ones people skip.
- A good supplier answers all nine in writing without needing a call to explain. Our own answers are under each one.
- If any answer is vague, that is an answer too.
Hiring someone to build your website or app is a decision most business owners make once, maybe twice, with no way to compare. So the conversation tends to be about design and price, because those are the parts you can see. The parts that cost you later are the parts you can’t: who owns it, who looks after it, and what happens when the person who built it stops answering.
These are the nine questions worth asking anyone, including us. Our answers are under each.
1. Who owns the site, the domain and the logins when it’s done?
The answer should be: you, all three, in your own name. The domain is the asset; everything else is replaceable. If the domain is registered under the developer’s account, or the site lives inside a platform you can’t export from, you are renting, whatever the invoice says.
Ours: the domain stays in your name and renews separately, usually around £10–15 a year. The site is plain files on your domain and you can walk off with them any time. Analytics and Search Console are set up in your name.
2. What exactly is included, as a list?
Not “a professional website”. A list: pages, forms, hosting and for how long, the SSL certificate, page titles and descriptions, headings, a sitemap, your business details marked up for search, analytics. If the search basics only appear when you also buy a monthly plan, you have learned what the monthly plan is for. We set that line out in is SEO included in web design?
Ours: hand-coded and mobile-first, your brand and your words, an enquiry form wired to your inbox, twelve months’ hosting and SSL, the search basics, and fixes on us while the hosting is with us. Every price.
3. What happens after launch, and what does it cost?
A site with nobody minding it fails quietly: the form stops sending, the certificate lapses, the prices go stale. Ask who is watching it, what that costs, and what a change costs. A cheap build that goes silent after launch is a bill deferred. We wrote the full picture in what a website care plan covers.
Ours: the first year’s hosting is in the build. From year two, Care at £99 a year, Found at £39 a month, Growing at £79 a month. Plenty of businesses only need Care, and we will say so.
4. How do I change a price or swap a photo?
This is the question that predicts how the next two years feel. If every small change means emailing someone and waiting for an invoice, the site will not get changed, and a site that is not changed goes out of date. Ask whether there is an editor you can use, whether changes are included in a plan, and what counts as a change.
Ours: where your site needs it, an editor comes with the build, whatever you do afterwards. On Found, you message, it’s done — no per-change fee. If it turns into a whole new section, that is Growing or a job priced up front, and you know which before it starts.
5. Can I see three sites you built that are live right now?
Not mockups, not a portfolio PDF. Live sites with addresses you can open on your phone, and ideally a client you can ask. Then open them on a bad signal and see how fast they load, because that is how your customers will meet yours.
Ours: a page of live sites and three apps on both the App Store and Google Play, all linked from our work page. Go and scroll them.
6. What is the total cost over three years?
The build price is the headline. Add hosting, the domain, any monthly plan, any per-change fees, any plugins or platform subscriptions, and your own hours. Ask for the three-year number from each supplier and compare those, not the headlines. We did the sums for builder platforms in Wix or Squarespace vs a bespoke site.
Ours: a £175 rebuild with year one included, then £99 a year, is £373 over three years, with no per-change invoices on top. Monthly plans only if you want us running it.
7. How will you protect my Google rankings through the move?
If you already have a site, your rankings live with your domain and with the addresses of your pages. A rebuild that changes addresses without redirecting them, or that replaces six paragraphs with a photo and a headline, can lose years of history. Ask for the plan: page inventory, redirects one to one, titles and descriptions carried across, a baseline from Search Console before switching. The full version is in will I lose my Google ranking if I redesign my website?
Ours: that is the plan, on every rebuild. Same page, same address wherever possible; redirects where not; the words kept; a baseline taken before the DNS change.
8. How will the forms be tested, and who checks them later?
Most “tests” are the builder filling in the form from their own computer and seeing a thank-you page. That proves nothing. Ask whether it will be tested from a different device and a different email address, whether the notification lands in an inbox someone reads, and who checks it again in six months. Forms are the commonest silent failure on small business sites.
Ours: every form tested from a different device and address before launch, and while your hosting is with us, if it breaks, it is on us.
9. What happens if you disappear?
Ask it plainly. Freelancers move on, studios close, people get ill. The answer that matters is not “I won’t” but “here is what you would be holding if I did”: the files, the domain, the hosting account, the logins, all in your name, so anyone competent can pick it up.
Ours: you would be holding everything. Plain HTML on your own domain, the logins in your name, no platform in the way. That is the point of building it this way.
What the answers tell you
You are not looking for a supplier who scores nine out of nine on some ideal. You are looking for one who answers all nine plainly, in writing, and whose answers still make sense if you read them back in two years. A supplier who needs a call to explain question one, or who gets vague around question nine, has told you how the relationship will go.
And if you want to skip the questionnaire and judge the work instead: send us your website, or just your Instagram, and we rebuild a few of your pages properly and send them back as a link, free. No call, no card. Websites from £175, live in under a week depending on the build, and you don’t pay the balance until you love it.
Euan RobertsonFounder of AIORCA LTD. Builds every site and app himself — websites, platforms and three apps on both stores — for small businesses in Lanarkshire, Glasgow and worldwide. About