Before you pay for a website: eight things to have in writing

Most arguments between a business and its web designer start months after the site goes live. The domain renewal lands in the designer’s inbox, not yours. A change you thought was included turns out to be extra. The site is slow on phones and nobody agreed it should be fast. None of this is about design talent. It is about what was never written down before the work started.

The short answer

Before you pay for a website, get eight things in writing: who owns the domain and every account, what pages and languages are included, how fast the site must be on a phone, what happens after launch and what it costs per year, how many rounds of changes you get, who writes the content, how backups work, and how you can leave. A good designer will agree to all of it without hesitation.

Ownership comes first

The domain is the most valuable part of a small company’s website, because it is printed on everything and customers type it from memory. It should be registered in your company’s name, with your email as the contact, in an account you can log into. ICANN’s statement of registrant rights and responsibilities is clear that the registrant carries sole responsibility for the domain and must keep contact details current. If the registrant is your designer, in law and in practice the domain is theirs.

The same applies to hosting, the WordPress administrator account, Google Search Console, analytics and any paid plugins or themes. The designer can have access to all of them. The accounts themselves should belong to you. Ask for a list, and check each one is in your name before the final payment.

The eight things to agree

Item	What to have in writing
Ownership	Domain, hosting, admin and analytics accounts in your company’s name
Scope	The list of pages, forms and features, and whether Arabic is a full version or a few translated pages
Speed	A measurable target on mobile, checked before handover
After launch	What is included each year and the exact yearly price
Changes	How many revision rounds are included and the price of extra work
Content	Who writes the text, in which languages, and who supplies photos
Backups	How often, where they are stored, and how a restore is done
Leaving	What you receive if you move to another provider

Scope: Arabic is not a translation job

In Kuwait and the Gulf, a business site almost always needs Arabic and English. Many quotes treat Arabic as translating some pages at the end. A proper Arabic version is a second site in layout terms: text runs right to left, menus and icons flip, numbers and dates need rules, and the Arabic pages need their own titles and descriptions so they can be found in Arabic searches. Google explains how to tell it which pages are language versions of each other in its guide to localized versions of your pages.

Ask the designer to show you an Arabic page they built, on a phone. If the Arabic looks like an afterthought there, it will look like one on your site too. We listed the common technical faults in why your Arabic pages are not being found.

Speed: agree a number

“The site will be fast” cannot be checked. A number can. Google’s Core Web Vitals give three: the main content should load within 2.5 seconds, the page should respond to a tap within 200 milliseconds, and the layout should not jump around as it loads. Put those in the agreement for the home page and the main service pages on a mobile connection, and ask for the test result at handover.

Speed is mostly decided by choices made early: a heavy page builder, large uncompressed photos, a slider on the home page, a dozen plugins that each add scripts. It is far cheaper to agree the target before the build than to fix a slow site after launch.

After launch: the cost nobody quotes

A website is not finished at launch. WordPress, its theme and plugins release updates, some of them security fixes. Hosting renews. Certificates renew. Someone has to watch that the site is up. If none of this is agreed, it either does not happen, which is how sites get hacked, or it arrives later as an unexpected bill.

Ask for a yearly price for everything after launch, what it includes, and what it does not. Paying once a year is simpler for a small business than a monthly fee, and it forces both sides to say clearly what the money covers.

Backups and leaving

Backups should be automatic, stored somewhere other than the server the site runs on, and tested. The WordPress documentation on backups makes the point that a backup you have never restored is a hope, not a plan. Ask how often backups run and how long a restore takes.

The exit clause is the one people skip. If you move to another provider in two years, you should receive the full site files, a database export, all licence keys and all login details, within a stated number of days. Agreeing this at the start costs nothing. Negotiating it during a dispute is painful.

Accessibility and forms

A business site should be usable by people with weaker eyesight, people on older phones and people using screen readers. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are the reference. At minimum, ask for readable text contrast, images with descriptions, and forms that can be completed with a keyboard and show clear error messages.

Forms deserve their own line in the agreement: where each form’s messages go, whether they are also stored on the site so no enquiry is lost if an email fails, and what protects them from spam. And do not publish your email address on the site. A contact form does the same job without inviting spam.

A worked example

Take an illustrative case: a dental clinic in Jabriya commissions a bilingual site. The first quote says “5-page website, Arabic and English, KD 400”. It does not name the pages, does not say who registers the domain, and does not mention anything after launch. A second quote is higher but lists the pages in both languages, puts the domain and hosting in the clinic’s name, sets a mobile speed target, includes a booking enquiry form stored on the site, and states a yearly price for updates, hosting and monitoring.

Over three years, the second quote is often cheaper, because the first one’s missing items reappear as extras. More importantly, the clinic owns its site from day one.

Mistakes to avoid

Paying in full before launch removes your leverage for the last fixes; tie the final payment to handover of every account. Choosing a design from a mock-up on a desktop screen hides how the site behaves on phones, where most Kuwaiti visitors will see it. And approving a site without the real content in place leads to surprises when the text is longer, or the Arabic runs differently, than the placeholder did.

How Tothiq does it

Tothiq’s website design and development service puts all eight points in the agreement. The build is KD 690, once, in Arabic and English, with the domain and every account in your name. Management, which covers hosting, software updates and uptime monitoring, is KD 95 a year, paid once a year in advance, and it is optional. If you sell online, see Shopify or WooCommerce when your customers pay with KNET. Send us your enquiry and we will reply with the scope in writing.

Frequently asked questions

Can my designer register the domain for me?

They can do the work, but the domain should be registered in your company’s name with your contact details, in an account you control.

Do I need Arabic from the start?

If your customers read Arabic, yes. Adding a proper Arabic version later usually costs more than building both together.

How do I check the site’s speed myself?

Run the page through Google’s PageSpeed Insights on the mobile setting and compare the Core Web Vitals with the numbers in your agreement.

What if I want to change provider later?

With ownership and an exit clause in place, you ask for the files, database and logins and hand them to the new provider.

Is yearly management really necessary?

Someone must update the software, renew hosting and watch that the site is up. You can do it yourself, but it cannot be skipped.