The web projects that end badly rarely involve anyone behaving dishonestly. They involve a scope nobody pinned down, a team that quietly changed after the contract was signed, and a launch date that kept moving until both sides were exhausted. By month four the client feels ripped off and the agency feels underpaid, and both of them are partly right.
You can screen for almost all of that in two conversations, if you ask the right things. Here is what to ask, and what a good answer sounds like.
Ask what they built, not just what they can show you
Every portfolio page is a highlight reel, and there is nothing wrong with that. The problem is that a portfolio entry does not tell you what the agency contributed. Plenty of listed projects were designed by someone else and only implemented by the agency, or built by a contractor who has since moved on, or handed over half-finished and rescued by the client's own team.
So ask directly: on this project, what did you do and what did the client's team do? Who designed it, who wrote the copy, who built the integrations? A confident answer is specific and unembarrassed about the division of labour. A vague one, all "we handled everything end to end" with no detail, is worth pushing on.
- Ask for a project close to yours in complexity rather than in industry. Building for a restaurant and a clinic is similar work; building a brochure site and a booking platform is not.
- Ask for a live URL rather than a screenshot, then run it through PageSpeed Insights yourself and open it on your phone. Two minutes of checking tells you more than the case study will.
- Ask to speak to one past client, ideally one whose project ran into a problem. How an agency handles trouble is far more informative than how they handle a smooth job.
- Ask what they would change about a project they are showing you. Anyone who has done this work for a few years has opinions about their older builds, and hearing none is a small warning sign.
Find out who is doing the work, by name
This is the single most common gap between the sales conversation and the project itself. The person who impresses you in the pitch, who talks fluently about architecture and asks sharp questions about your business, is frequently not the person who will build your site. After the contract is signed you get handed to a project coordinator and a developer you have not met.
That handoff is not automatically a problem. Larger agencies are structured that way and many of them deliver well. It only becomes a problem when nobody tells you it is happening. Ask who specifically will be designing and building the site, whether they are employees or subcontractors, and who your day-to-day contact will be. Then ask what happens if that person leaves mid-project. An agency with real process has an answer ready.
Settle ownership and post-launch before you sign
You should own your domain, your hosting account, and your code. All three, outright, registered in your business name. This is not an aggressive ask and any reasonable agency will agree without hesitation. Where it goes wrong is when the domain is registered under the agency's account for convenience, or the site sits on their reseller hosting with no way to export it. Years later you want to move and discover the asset you paid for is not really yours. Untangling that is slow, expensive, and occasionally impossible.
- Domain registered to your business, with you listed as the registrant and holding the login. The agency can have access; they should not have sole possession.
- Code ownership transferring to you on final payment, stated in the contract, along with a repository or full file export you receive at handover.
- A written maintenance arrangement covering what is included, what is billed hourly, and the response time you can expect when something breaks.
- A clear answer on what happens if you part ways: how the site is transferred, in what format, and whether there is a fee for it.
Be wary of vague scope paired with unlimited revisions
"Unlimited revisions" sounds generous and functions as the opposite. It is usually offered alongside a scope document that never says how many pages exist, what each one contains, or what counts as finished. Those two things together create a project with no end state. You keep asking for changes because nothing was ever agreed as final, and the agency keeps absorbing them until goodwill runs out, at which point responses get slower and the tone shifts.
A tighter arrangement helps both sides. Two or three named revision rounds at defined stages, a page-by-page scope, and a written definition of what triggers a change order. That last one matters most. "Move this section up" is a revision. "Add a members area" is a new project, and everyone is better off if the contract says so before anyone is annoyed.
Ambiguity is what makes website projects go wrong, and it always costs the client more than the agency. Every question you resolve before signing is a fight you never have to have in month three.
Honest red flags
- A quote arrives with no discovery. If nobody asked what the site needs to do, the number is a guess and it will move once work starts.
- Guaranteed first-page rankings, particularly within a fixed timeframe. Nobody can promise that, and offering it says something about how the rest of their claims should be read.
- Heavy pressure to sign now for a discount that expires this week. Good agencies have a pipeline and do not need a countdown clock.
- No written contract, or a one-page quote with no deliverables, milestones, or payment schedule attached to anything specific.
- Full payment demanded upfront. A deposit of 30 to 50 percent is standard practice; the whole amount before work begins removes any leverage you have if delivery slips.
None of this requires you to become technical. It requires you to treat the engagement like any other supplier relationship where you are buying something you cannot fully inspect in advance: get specifics in writing, know who is responsible, and understand what you walk away with if it ends early. The agencies worth hiring will answer all of it without getting defensive, and the ones who bristle at the questions have told you what you needed to know.