Nine signs you are buying a cheaply built website

You do not need to read code to spot a carelessly built website. The nine signs below are visible from the demo, using a phone and a browser, in about ten minutes.

1. It scrolls sideways on a phone

Open the demo on your actual phone. If any page has to be dragged horizontally to read, or a block spills off the screen, the responsive work was never checked.

This is the most serious sign on the list, because over 70% of Vietnamese visitors arrive on a phone, and because Google ranks the mobile version.

2. Text jumps down when images load

Reload the home page and watch the first two seconds. If content shifts as images appear, the images are embedded without declared dimensions. It ruins your Core Web Vitals and makes visitors tap the wrong thing.

3. Every page has the same browser-tab title

Open three different pages in three tabs and read the tab labels. If all three match — or worse, all three say "Home" or the template's name — you cannot rank for more than one thing, and it tells you nobody looked at the SEO.

4. Images download at more than 500KB

Right-click a product photo, open it in a new tab, check the size. Or paste the demo URL into PageSpeed Insights and read the "Properly size images" item.

A decent product image should be under 150KB as WebP. If you find 2MB JPEGs, the site will be slow and the only fix is rebuilding the image pipeline.

5. The contact form goes nowhere visible

Submit the form on the demo. If there is no clear confirmation afterwards, or the page reloads and loses what you typed, the form is unfinished.

Then ask one more question: where does a submission go — which inbox, or stored where? Plenty of websites have forms that go nowhere at all, and the owner finds out after three quiet months.

6. The browser back button breaks the page

Open a product listing, apply a filter, then press Back. If the filter state is lost, or the page goes blank, or everything reloads from scratch, the navigation was built in JavaScript without handling browser history.

7. No real contact details or policy pages

Scroll to the footer. It should carry an address or at least a real phone number, a privacy policy and terms of use. A footer with only social icons and a copyright line is missing the things both Google and customers use to judge whether you are real.

8. Vietnamese diacritics clip or overlap

Find a long heading in the demo. Vietnamese carries diacritics, so a line of text is taller than the English equivalent, and many foreign templates leave no room — marks get clipped, or two lines overlap.

Check a product page with a long name too. This is the single most common defect in templates bought abroad and translated into Vietnamese.

9. A mobile PageSpeed score under 60

This one is measurable, and it is the composite signal for the eight above.

Open PageSpeed Insights, paste the demo URL, choose the Mobile tab. Under 60 means real problems. Over 90 means somebody cared. If the seller says "the demo is slow because it is a demo server", ask for a real client URL to measure instead.

The ten-minute checklist

Copy this and run it against any demo:

• Open on a phone, scroll the home page — any sideways drag?
• Reload and watch two seconds — does text jump?
• Open three pages, read the tab titles — are they different?
• Open a product image in a new tab — how heavy?
• Fill in and submit the contact form — any confirmation?
• Filter a listing, press Back — is state kept?
• Read the footer — phone number and policies present?
• Find a long Vietnamese heading — are the marks clipped?
• PageSpeed Insights, Mobile tab — what score?

Eight out of nine is good. Under six means the low price is deferring a cost, not removing it.

Why we publish this

Because you can run the list against our own templates, and we would like you to. A website measured against nine public checks is worth more than one sold on promises.

If you run it and find something failing, message us on Zalo — that is the most useful bug report we get.