When weighing a website quote, the first thing people look at is the price. Yet the three things that cause the most trouble in a site's first year are different: why the timeline slips, which costs arrive after the first invoice, and what stays with whom if you part ways. This piece takes them in turn and ends with a short list of questions to ask when you request a quote.
Time: the content sets the calendar
When a site will be finished depends as much on when the content is ready as on the number of pages. Design and build can be planned; copy, photos and approvals usually wait on your side. That is why timelines come with the note “once the content is complete”. It is not a loophole: a page designed without its copy is designed on guesswork and has to be reopened when the copy arrives.
For a frame of reference, in our packages a one-page site takes about 10 working days, an eight-page business site about 25 and a fifteen-page comprehensive site about 35. Every extra language, every extra approval round and every late piece of content adds to that.
- Copy arriving in bits and pieces.
- Leaving the photo shoot, or the choice of photos, until the end.
- The decision-maker being unreachable at the approval stage.
- The page count growing after work has started.
Cost: the first invoice and the yearly bills
The price of a site is driven mostly by whether the design is built on a ready template or made for your brand, the number of pages, the number of languages, and whether the site “does” something. A presentation and contact site is not the same product as one that takes payments, runs memberships or handles bookings. The latter is a software project in its own right and is priced like one.
The costs that come after the first invoice are often missing from the quote. The domain is paid to the registrar every year. Hosting, the server the site lives on, is a yearly service. Every change you ask for after launch is a job of its own. When comparing quotes, adding these up over three years rather than one gives a more honest picture.
The gap between the cheap-looking quote and the expensive-looking one often closes in year two.
Ownership: what belongs to whom
The most critical part of a site is not the design but the domain. If the domain is registered to the agency's or the developer's account, parting ways costs you your address, not just your site, and your email addresses usually hang off that domain too. The domain should always be registered in your name, in an account you can log into.
The second is the source code. Some services build the site inside their own closed system; it works, but it cannot be moved. Ask whether the source code will be handed over to you. The same question applies to the copy, the photos and the design files.
The third is the analytics accounts. Google Analytics, Search Console and the like should be opened in your name, with the provider added only as an authorised user. Years of visitor data are worth as much as the site itself.
Seven questions to ask when you get a quote
- When does the clock start, and at which stages do you need my approval?
- How many rounds of revisions are included?
- Whose name will the domain be registered in?
- What does hosting cost after the first year?
- Will the source code and design files be handed over to me?
- How, and at what cost, is a small change made after launch?
- If something breaks, how long are fixes covered at no extra cost?
In our packages the answers are written down from the start: the domain is registered in your name, the source code is yours and handed over whenever you ask, the first year of hosting is included, and the timeline, revision count and bug-fix warranty are on the package page. Whoever you ask, get the answers in writing.
