Ask what programs were built from scratch, and which ones were purchased. If any software needs to be purchased for your web site, find out the name and vendor. An example of this is a real estate firm that I just met at the beach that paid $2400 for a live chat system that is actually a free program. Their web design company ripped them off on the software, and then charged them $300 to show them how to use it, when the training took 10 minutes.

Make sure that you won’t be billed for meetings. That same web company billed this real estate firm for website meetings.

If you are going to pay for traffic reports and SEO monitoring, make sure you really do your homework. This other firm charged $1200 per month to simply export Google Analytics to a spreadsheet. The receptionist at the web design firm is the one that did the work. This obviously is a total rip-off, since Google analytics are free.

Don’t pay for weak first attempts. We just had a client move to us after she paid $18,000 to get ripped off on her book web site. She is an author. The design firm billed her to come up with a design concept that she rejected. Make sure that you, the client, aren’t paying for a design that doesn’t meet your goals. The number of concepts provided should be laid out in your contract.

I could go on and on. The point is, make sure that you don’t get gouged if the web firm charges everything by the hour. Make sure that there are remedies when the design firm goes over budget on your project.

I am having similar problems with my clients - all want an estimate of costs, with no clear idea what they want to do.

Website Planning and setting goals is extremely important.

Here is another good article on website planning:
http://www.easysiteguide.com/articles/website-planning/before-you-start.html