Searching for “the best web agency in Cameroon” will not get you far. Six simple questions, asked before you pay, tell you whether your website will really be yours.
You type “web agency Douala” or “best web agency Cameroon”, and Google gives you a full page of names. They all promise a modern, fast, well-ranked website. How do you choose between people who say the same thing? By asking the right questions before you sign, not after. The answers will tell you more than any ranking.
Will the domain name be in your name?
This is the first question, and the most important one. Your web address, the “yourcompany.cm” or “.com”, is registered in someone’s name. If it is in the provider’s name, they can keep it the day you want to leave, or simply forget to renew it. You then lose the address your customers know, the one printed on your business cards.
Ask for it to be registered in your name, with your email address, and for the login details to be handed over to you. If you are torn between the two extensions, we wrote an article on choosing between .cm and .com.
Who will hold the access?
The domain is not enough. There is the hosting, the site’s admin area, the mailboxes, the Google listing. For each one, ask: will I have my own login? A serious agency has no reason to refuse. It can keep its own access to do the work, but yours must exist.
Get those logins in writing, and store them somewhere other than the project’s WhatsApp chat. Phones get lost.
What happens after the site goes live?
A website is not a piece of furniture you deliver and forget. Security updates have to be done, the domain and hosting renewed every year, and whatever breaks when a browser changes has to be fixed. Ask three precise questions: how much support is included, what maintenance costs afterwards, and who you call when the site will not open on a Saturday morning.
If the answer is vague, picture yourself a year from now, needing to change a phone number on the home page.
What is the timeline, step by step?
“Two weeks” means nothing until you know what happens during those two weeks. Ask for a simple schedule: when you get a first mock-up, when you approve the texts, when the site goes live. Ask what is expected from you too. Very often, what delays a website is the texts and photos the client has not sent yet. Better to know from the start.
Can you see real sites, online?
A screenshot takes an hour to fake. A live website can be checked. Ask for addresses and open them on your phone, ideally on the connection you normally use, not on the agency’s office wifi. Check whether the page loads quickly, whether the text reads without zooming, whether the button to call or message on WhatsApp works.
If you can, call one of the businesses whose site is shown, and ask them how the work went. You can see our own work on the work page.
What exactly is in the quote?
A good quote reads like a shopping list: number of pages, whether texts are written for you, whether the domain and hosting are included, training to edit the site yourself, length of support. What is not written down does not exist. Ask how payment works too, and what happens if you are not happy with the result.
What to steer clear of
Be wary of a price given before any question about your business. A website meant to bring you customers cannot be priced without knowing who those customers are. Be wary too of a promise of “first place on Google”: nobody controls Google’s ranking, and those who promise it know that.
Finally, do not choose on price alone. The cheapest website becomes the most expensive one the day it has to be rebuilt because nobody knows where the logins are any more.
With us, to be clear
The domain name is registered in your name, and the login details are handed over to you. The quote is free, payment is made in instalments, and you are refunded if the result does not suit you. What is included is detailed on the website page, and what happens after delivery on the maintenance page.
Ask us the six questions above, and compare our answers with the others. That is exactly what you should do. Ask for your quote, and we will reply with precise answers, not promises.
