What should you check before buying a website?

The domain must be registered in your name. It is your address on the internet, and whoever owns it controls where your customers land. If the person who builds the site registers it under their own name, they take the address with them when you part ways — along with your printed cards, your signage and the ranking you spent years building. Ask one question before you sign: “Will the domain be registered in my name?” If the answer is not yes, look elsewhere.

Some providers do not sell a website — they rent it. The site stays online while you pay a monthly fee and disappears the day you stop. Ask directly: “If I end the arrangement, do the site and its content stay with me?” Every site I deliver runs on the client's own domain and hosting account, so you can hand it to someone else and carry on.

The first-year price is usually clear; the surprise arrives in year two, when domain renewal, hosting and maintenance are billed separately. Ask for the figure in writing up front. On my side the first year of domain and hosting is included in the package price. From the second year you pay 1,500 TL for domain and hosting plus 3,500 TL for maintenance — 5,000 TL a year in total, with nothing else added.

Most visitors arrive from a phone, and if a page does not open within two or three seconds they hit back. Before you buy, ask for a site the provider built previously, open it on your own phone and count. A slow site does not only lose visitors — Google pushes slow pages down the results as well. Text should be readable without zooming and buttons wide enough to tap comfortably.

Building a site and getting it found are two different jobs. Ask concretely: does every page have its own title and description, is the business name and city written into the pages, is the site submitted to Google Search Console, and is a Google Business Profile being set up? Local map results come from the Business Profile, not from the site alone — the two have to be set up together.

Prices change, opening hours change, new services appear. Who makes those edits, how quickly and at what cost should be clear from day one. Some providers charge for every small change; others simply stop replying. My annual maintenance covers text, photo, price and opening-hour updates at no extra cost. Work that expands the scope, such as adding new pages, is quoted separately and priced before it starts.