Five questions with a number for whoever builds your site.

“It’s going to look amazing” can’t be checked. A number can. Before you sign with whoever is going to build your site, ask these five questions. Each one is answered with a number or a date, and you can check every one of them yourself afterwards.

One: what score will it get on PageSpeed, on mobile? That’s Google’s free tool from the previous entry. 90 and up shows green; we hold ourselves to 95. Two: how many seconds until the main content appears? Google considers 2.5 seconds or less good, and the same report tells you.

Three: how many rounds of changes does the price include? If the answer is “as many as you want”, ask for a number: with no written limit, the arguments come later. Ours: up to three, during the design phase. Four: how much will I pay each year after delivery? Domain, hosting and maintenance, with a price and in writing.

Five: what day does my domain expire, and whose name is it in? The right answer is a date and a name: yours. Our own domain was suspended over an unconfirmed email; we know what we’re talking about.

Keep the answers. The day your site is delivered, go back to them: measure the score and the seconds on your real address, count the rounds you used and log in to the account where your domain lives. If the numbers match, they delivered. If not, you have something to hold them to.

And why numbers instead of adjectives? We explain it in “Why we publish the metrics”.

Want this for your business? See Premium web or tell us about your project.

— Paola A. González Guerrero · founder, EMPOWR STUDIO