A website is usually the first thing a prospective customer sees of your business, which makes it easy to focus entirely on how it looks. But most of the problems businesses run into happen after launch, and they're rarely about design — they're about who controls what, and what happens when something needs to change. Whoever you end up working with, these are worth asking about up front.
Insights
What to check before you pay for a small business website
01
Who controls the domain name
Find out exactly how your domain is registered and who has access to it. It's a small detail until the day you need to change something and discover you can't.
02
Where it's hosted, and who fixes it
Ask what happens if the site goes down outside business hours — is that covered, or an extra call-out fee?
03
HTTPS, as standard
A valid SSL certificate should be included and kept current without you having to ask. Browsers now actively warn visitors away from sites without it.
04
Whether it actually works on a phone
Most visitors will arrive on a phone, not a laptop. Ask to see the mobile version before you sign anything, not after launch.
05
Who makes changes, and what it costs
Can you update your own hours, prices, or photos, or does every small change go through the provider — and if so, at what cost and turnaround?
06
What happens if something breaks
Ask about backups directly. A provider without a clear backup answer is a provider without backups.
07
The SEO basics
Page titles, meta descriptions, a sitemap, and basic structured data should be part of the build, not a separate add-on quoted later.
08
Email deliverability on the new domain
A new domain needs its own email authentication set up — see our explainer on SPF, DKIM, and DMARC — otherwise your first invoices from it can land in spam.
09
What's involved if you ever want to leave
Every provider runs their service differently. Ask up front — before you need the answer — exactly what's involved in moving on, so it's a known process rather than a surprise.
How we handle this at Allez Digital
Our website service is fully managed — we handle the domain, hosting, security, and ongoing updates as part of the engagement, so none of the above becomes your problem to solve. We're upfront about exactly how that works before you sign up, which is really the point of this list: know the answers before you need them, whoever you go with.
Planning a new website?
See how our website creation service works, end to end.