1. There are no real definitions of what your project should include - everything is very vague and can be interpreted in a myriad of ways.

2. Very limited consultative work - nothing is really investigated or looked into, so there may be far better ways of achieving what you need that you're completely missing out on. They just put on paper exactly what you say without questioning it.

3. The price is normally far too high vs what you are receiving.

So even if it’s cheap, it’s actually expensive for what you’re getting.

4. There’s usually limited explanation of what the process is or how anything works.

5. The project’s output is also usually vague which leads to disputes since you both have very different expectations of what the finished website should actually look like.

1. Many agencies may say that they are building your website from scratch, but without going through a proper design UX/UI process together there is no way to really prove that and most likely a template is being used.

2. There is no thoughtful UX/UI stage where things are designed and done for a reason, everything is just copied from a template that might not even be relevant.

3. There is no chance for you to provide your feedback and correct things that you don’t like – everything is done behind the scenes.

4. Making any changes will have negative effects on the responsiveness and device optimisation of the website, so if any changes are needed after you see the design (usually at the end of the project) they will be costly, due to the fact that the design is already coded and cannot be simply changed at this stage.

5. The website is just designed for desktop and not for mobile or tablet, so it won’t work well on these devices or will be buggy in places.

6. Your content is definitely different to the template, this means that things that looked good on the template look strange when your content is added.

1. The functionality that you had in mind for your project, was probably quite specific and needed to be done in a certain way. By not properly scoping this in the initial stages, the functionality that you are left with isn’t quite what you need.

2. You often won’t be able to request any changes to this and you’ll be left with a website that doesn’t work quite as intended and is very expensive to improve.

1. You probably have quite a few modifications that you’d like to make to the design (it’s only natural). There may not even be any changes allowed in your contract, and if there are, since the website is already coded, design modifications take a lot of time and are costly at this point.

2. The website looks ok on some desktop computers, but on smaller laptops, mobiles, and tablets it doesn’t look that good at all since it’s not optimised. And sometimes it’s completely broken.

3. Because there was no QA testing, there are mistakes and issues all over the website and it’s your job to find them.

4. You now enter into a long and unpleasant back and forth with the agency as you argue about what should have been included and things that are wrong.

5. Despite the many issues, the website kind of works, and perhaps seems like too much hassle or expense to redo – so you’re left with a poorly performing website that you’re pretty much stuck with.

6. In other cases, the website will be so far removed from your intended output that you’ll need to begin the process again with another agency. And this time we recommend you go for a professional approach, that will cost more, but ultimately will gain you a whole lot more in both time saved and revenue/results gained.