If you’re about to have work done on your website, whether that’s a full redesign or building something brand new, you’ve probably already started thinking about the fun stuff. What colors do I want? What should the homepage look like? Do I like this designer’s portfolio?
Those questions are fine. But they’re not the ones that protect you.
After running Causey Web Solutions and watching a few friends get burned by agencies before I ever came along, I’ve come to believe that the most important questions are the boring ones. The infrastructure questions. The “what happens if this goes sideways” questions. And the uncomfortable truth is that most people don’t ask them until it’s too late, usually right after they’ve already fallen in love with a mockup and signed something.
So let me walk you through the questions I think actually matter, why they matter, and what I’d want you to hear if you were sitting across from me.
Ask the Boring Questions Before You Fall in Love With the Mockup
Here’s the order most people get wrong. They get excited about the design first, then sort out the logistics later. I’d flip that.
The pretty stuff is the easy part. A good designer can make almost anything look nice. What you really want to know, before you’re emotionally invested, is what you actually own at the end, what happens if the relationship ends, and what you’re responsible for going forward. Get those answered first. If a designer gets cagey or annoyed when you ask, that tells you a lot more than any portfolio ever could.
Who Owns the Site, the Domain, and the Files?
This is the single most important question on the list, and it’s the one I feel most strongly about.
When you work with me specifically, you own your site, and you own your domain. Full stop. The one thing I usually ask for in return is a small credit and acknowledgment in the footer. That’s it. Everything else is yours.
I didn’t always handle it the way I do now. Early on, I would set up domains under my own account because it was convenient for me. Then I had a client who wanted to move to a different system that worked better for their needs, and untangling the domain and hosting from my account was more of a headache than it needed to be. That experience taught me something. Now I prefer for the client to procure their own domain and set up their own hosting, under their own account, with their own card, using my suggestions. I’m right there to help set it all up, and I get access to the credentials from the very beginning. Everybody wins, and there’s nothing to untangle later.
I’ve also seen the other side of this. I’ve dealt with situations where someone else set up a domain and the client themselves didn’t even have access to it. That’s a terrible spot to be in. Your domain is your address on the internet. You should always have the keys.
And I’ve watched friends learn this the hard way. A couple of them went with an agency before I started my business, and when they wanted to leave, the agency essentially held their site hostage. They had to start over from scratch.
So when you talk to any designer, ask plainly:
- Do I own my domain, and will it be in my account?
- Do I own the site and the files when we’re done?
- If I ever want to leave, what exactly can I take with me?
What Platform Will You Build On, and What Happens If I Want to Leave?
The platform matters more than people realize, and not just for how the site gets built. It affects how stuck you can become.
I’ll be honest about a nuance here, because I’ve lived it. I had a client whose site I built on WordPress, and later they wanted to move to a different platform that fit their needs better. The thing is, with most WordPress sites, if you move away from WordPress, the site has to be recreated. It can’t just be copied over and migrated cleanly. From the outside, that can almost look like a designer holding your site hostage, when really it’s just the technical reality of how that platform works.
Sometimes that’s the quiet benefit of building a site in pure HTML and CSS instead of leaning on a builder, because it’s more portable. But unless you or your designer really knows the ins and outs of working in code, that approach gets cumbersome fast. There’s a tradeoff either way, and a good designer will tell you what it is instead of pretending there isn’t one.
While we’re on platforms, I’ll add this from my own preferences. There are some hosting environments that technically work with WordPress but are genuinely a pain to manage on the backend when it comes to files and the day-to-day. I prefer to work somewhere that allows for a staging site that isn’t confusing to use, and I like to build in a local environment so I can make sure everything actually works before it goes live. The point for you as a client is this: a designer who cares about a clean, testable workflow is a designer who’s thinking past launch day.
So ask:
- What platform will you build on, and why that one for my business specifically?
- If I move to something else later, what’s involved?
What’s Included, and What Costs Extra?
This one saves relationships. A lot of friction between clients and designers comes down to mismatched expectations about what was in the deal.
Get clear, before you start, on what’s included and what’s an add-on. Revisions, content, images, ongoing maintenance, SEO, hosting fees. None of these are bad to charge for. What’s bad is finding out about them as a surprise on an invoice. Ask for the line between “this is part of the project” and “this is extra,” and ask it early.
Should I Be Updating This Myself, or Do You Handle That?
Most advice tells you to ask the designer, “Will I be able to update the site myself?” That’s a fine question, but I think there’s a better question to ask yourself first.
Do you actually want to do your own updates?
Be honest about it. Some business owners love getting in there and changing things. Others never will, and they shouldn’t pretend otherwise. Once you know which kind of person you are, the question to the designer becomes much sharper. If you don’t want to do updates yourself, ask whether they offer ongoing content updates when you need them. That way you’re not stuck either learning a system you’ll resent or letting your site go stale because nobody’s touching it.
Who Writes the Content and Where Do the Images Come From?
This should be settled in your first real conversation, right after there’s genuine interest on both sides. Content and images are often where projects stall, because everyone assumes someone else is handling it.
So get it on the table early. Who’s writing the words? Who’s sourcing or creating the images? Are you providing them, or is that part of what you’re paying for? There’s no wrong answer, but there is a wrong time to figure it out, and that’s halfway through the build.
What Happens When Something Breaks After Launch?
Things break. I’ll be the first to admit it, and I’ll tell you on myself.
After I did an overhaul on my own site, I forgot to double-check a redirect to make sure it was pointing to the right place. That’s a lesson I am not going to forget any time soon. It happens to all of us, and what matters isn’t pretending it never will. What matters is whether your designer is going to be there to catch it and fix it.
That’s why I’d push you to ask not just “what’s your process,” though a simplified version of that is worth hearing, but specifically: how do you handle it when something breaks after the site is live? The answer tells you whether you’re hiring someone for a one-time transaction or someone who’s going to stick around.
“What Makes You Different?” and Why the Answer Matters Less Than the Honesty
It’s natural to ask a designer what makes them different from the next one. Go ahead and ask it. But I’d pay less attention to the answer itself and more to how honestly they give it.
A designer willing to tell you the tradeoffs, the things they’re still learning, and the parts that aren’t their strength is worth more than one with a polished pitch and no rough edges. For example, I’ll tell you straight that I’m early in my own SEO journey. I’ve just barely started seriously tracking traffic and learning that side of things in depth, so I’m not going to promise you a flood of new customers I haven’t yet proven I can deliver. I’d rather you trust what I tell you than oversell you and lose that trust later.
That kind of honesty is the thing to listen for, no matter who you hire.
The Real Takeaway
If you remember nothing else from this, remember two things.
First, you own your site and you own your domain. When you work with me, that’s never in question. Ask every designer you talk to until you’re certain it’s true for you too.
Second, get the boring questions answered before you agree to any kind of mockup. The design is the part everyone wants to rush to. The infrastructure is the part that protects you.
And here’s the last thing I want you to know about working with me. When we start, it’s not the end of a transaction. It’s the beginning of a relationship. After your project launches, I’m here to act as an anchor, so your site doesn’t slowly drift back to whatever it was before. That ongoing steadiness is, to me, the whole point.
If you’re weighing a new site or a redesign and you want someone who’ll answer the boring questions honestly and stick around after launch, I’d love to talk. That’s exactly the kind of work I’m here for at Causey Web Solutions.