What to Check Before You Sign With Any Lubbock Web Company

Every few months we get a version of the same question from a Lubbock owner who's about to sign with a web company: "Is this a good deal?" Usually they've got a proposal in hand, a price on it, and a gut feeling one way or the other. A gut feeling isn't nothing, but it's not enough to hang a few thousand dollars on. Here are six checks that take about fifteen minutes total, work on any company you're considering — including us — and tell you more than any pitch deck will.

1. Test their own site's speed, not just yours

Go to Google PageSpeed Insights, paste in the web company's own homepage, and hit analyze. You'll get a mobile and desktop score out of 100. Then paste in two or three actual client sites they show you — not screenshots, the live URLs. A company that talks up speed but scores poorly on its own build has told you something real. Google factors speed into ranking, and a slow mobile site loses customers before they even see what you sell.

2. Pull up the portfolio on your phone

Desktop screenshots in a proposal always look clean. Pull the actual sites up on your own phone instead. Does everything look like the same template with a new logo dropped in, or does each one look built for that specific business? A portfolio that only looks good on a monitor tells you exactly how much thought went into the phone experience — which is where most of your customers will actually land.

3. Ask what happens when a call gets missed

This is the one most guides skip, and it's the one that actually costs you money. A job site, a customer on the other line, whatever — you don't pick up. Ask directly: does the website or system do anything about that call, or does it just ring out to voicemail? Most sites, no matter how nice they look, do nothing. The lead hangs up and calls the next name on Google. If the answer is "nothing happens," you're not buying a growth tool. You're buying a brochure.

4. Ask if reviews are automatic or something you have to remember

Reviews are how the next customer decides between you and the shop across town. Ask whether review requests go out automatically after a job's marked done, or whether that's on you to remember every time. "You can always ask them yourself" is a nice way of saying it isn't actually built in.

5. Ask who owns the domain and the files — get it in writing

This is the one that bites people a year or two in. Is the domain registered in your name, or the company's? If you ever want to leave, do you get real files you can take anywhere, or are you stuck on a proprietary system only they can touch? A straight answer takes one sentence. If you get a longer answer than that, pay attention.

6. Ask exactly what a low flat rate actually includes

A cheap flat monthly rate for "a website" can look great on a flyer. Before you compare it to anything else, find out precisely what it does beyond sitting there with your business info on it. Does it text a missed call back? Follow up with a lead that goes quiet? Book an appointment on its own? If the answer to all three is no, that's fine — a basic site is a real, honest product. Just don't compare its price to a system that's built to do those three things, because you're not comparing the same category of tool.

The fifteen-minute version

Run all six, on us and on anyone else you're considering. We publish our pricing, we'll tell you straight what happens on a missed call, and you own your domain and your data from day one — every SmartWebsite™ plan works that way, no exceptions. If you'd rather skip the manual checklist, our free 12-Point Audit runs a version of these checks automatically and hands you a real number in about two minutes.