Website ownership is the question of who legally holds the pieces of your website: the domain name, the design and code, the written content and photos, and the accounts they all live in, once the build is done. These pieces can belong to different people, which is exactly why it is worth asking about each one plainly.
For a small business, the thing to know is that “you paid for it” and “you own it” are not automatically the same. Depending on the agreement, an agency can retain rights to the code or the design, or keep the domain and hosting under their own account, which can make leaving them harder than it should be. None of this is sinister on its own; it just means the terms belong in writing. Reasonable questions to ask up front: Is the domain registered in my name? Do I keep the content and images if we part ways? What exactly transfers to me, and when? This is background worth knowing, not legal advice; a lawyer is the right person for your specific contract.
I set every site up so the domain is yours, the content is yours, and you hold a perpetual license to the site itself, meaning you can take it and keep using it. If we ever part ways, you leave with a working website, not a standoff over the keys.