10 questions to ask before building a corporate website

Short answer: When comparing corporate website quotes, ask about scope before price: who will own the domain and content, who will update the site, what are the speed and SEO targets, will the old site’s links be preserved, are privacy requirements met, and who will maintain the site after launch? Until these answers are clear, quotes don’t describe the same job.

Budget season is when many companies put a new website on the table. Quotes can differ several times over, and most of that difference comes from things not written in the quote. Here are ten questions to ask before you sign:

1. What is this site meant to achieve?

Before asking for quotes, write the site’s main job in one sentence: collecting enquiries, selling products, or building trust with investors and job candidates? Every decision, from design to content structure, follows from that sentence. Sites without a main goal speak a little to everyone and fully to no one.

2. Whose name will the domain, hosting and code be in?

Make sure the domain is registered to your company and that hosting and admin panel credentials will be handed over to you. Even if you part ways with the agency, you should be able to access your site. Put this in the contract.

3. Who will update the site, and how?

Will you have to write to the agency every time you add news, change a team member or add a reference? Ask what the content management panel lets you edit, how multiple languages are managed and whether your team will be trained.

4. Who will prepare the content?

Projects are most often delayed not by design or development, but by content. Who will provide the copy, photos and project visuals? Are copywriting and translation included in the quote? If the content plan isn’t discussed at the start, even the best design waits with “lorem ipsum”.

5. How fast will the site be, and how will we measure it?

Speed matters for both user experience and search rankings. You can write Google’s Core Web Vitals thresholds (LCP under 2.5 seconds, INP under 200 milliseconds, CLS under 0.1) into the contract as targets. Specify that measurement will be on mobile.

6. Will the old site’s value in Google be preserved?

If you’ve had a site live for years, the rankings of old pages and the links they’ve earned from other sites are valuable. If addresses change on the new site, every old address should get a 301 redirect to its new equivalent. When we moved our own site from WordPress to a new platform, we redirected every old address to its new counterpart one by one; skip this step and traffic can drop overnight.

7. Will the basics for SEO and AI search be set up?

Page titles and descriptions, structured data (schema.org), a sitemap, hreflang tags for multilingual sites, image alt text… These aren’t a separate “SEO package”; they’re the foundation of a well-built site. AI assistants need the same foundation to read your site correctly; details are in our GEO guide.

8. Are privacy and security requirements met?

A contact form collects personal data, so a privacy notice, explicit consent where required and cookie preference management should be in place (in Türkiye, under KVKK, the personal data protection law). An SSL certificate, form spam protection, strong passwords and two-factor authentication for the admin panel, and regular backups are also worth asking about.

9. How will maintenance and support work after launch?

Software updates, security patches, backups, small change requests… The quote should state how many months of support are included after launch, the monthly maintenance fee after that, and how quickly requests are handled.

10. What is and isn’t in the quote?

Ask for line items as well as the total: design, development, content, translation, images/photography, hosting, domain, licences, maintenance. See recurring annual costs separately. You can only compare two quotes on the same line items.

In short

A good website quote clarifies scope, not just price.

When you get written answers to these ten questions, you can compare quotes fairly and make sure your site still serves you two years from now. For examples of sites we’ve built, see the Wittypoint and Marketing Communication School projects.

Let’s define the scope of your corporate website together: write to us.