Hiring someone to build your website is difficult because you are being asked to judge work you are not trained to evaluate, usually against quotes that are not comparable. This is a guide to asking better questions. Some of the answers will point you away from us, and that is the correct outcome when we are not the right fit.
On this page
- Look at real, live work
- Find out who actually does the work
- Understand the process before you commit
- Settle content and photography early
- Ownership and ongoing costs
- Ask what happens to your existing site
- What happens after launch
- Warning signs
- Freelancer, small studio, or larger agency
- How to compare proposals fairly
Look at real, live work
Portfolio screenshots are the easiest thing in this industry to fake. Ask for live URLs and visit them.
Once you are on a real site, open it on your phone first, because that is where most of your customers will be. Check whether the navigation works with a thumb, whether text is readable without zooming, whether the phone number is tappable, and how quickly it loads on mobile data rather than office wifi.
Then look for businesses roughly like yours. A studio with beautiful restaurant sites may have never built a site that has to generate estimate requests for a trades business. Relevant experience beats a prettier portfolio.
Ask for references, and ask those references specific questions: did it launch when it was supposed to, what happened when something needed changing afterwards, and would they hire them again.
Find out who actually does the work
The person selling is not always the person building. That is not inherently a problem, but you should know before you sign.
Ask who will design it, who will write the content, whether any of it is subcontracted, and who you contact when you have a question. With a solo operator you get direct access and a single point of failure. With a larger firm you get depth and continuity, and usually a project manager between you and the person doing the work. Both are legitimate. Pick knowingly.
Understand the process before you commit
Anyone who has built more than a handful of sites can describe their process without hesitating. Ask them to walk you through it, and listen for the parts that involve you.
- What happens before any design work starts
- When you will see something, and in what form
- How many rounds of revisions are included, and what happens after those
- What they need from you and by when
- How out-of-scope requests get priced mid-project
On timelines, be skeptical of anyone promising a fast launch without first asking about your content. Projects usually slip because content is not ready, not because design is slow. A provider who raises that early is being realistic rather than pessimistic.
Settle content and photography early
This is one of the most common sources of disappointment in website projects, and it is usually a misunderstanding rather than bad faith. The client assumed writing was included. The quote assumed the client would supply it.
Get it in writing. Who writes the pages, who edits them, how many revisions, and what happens if you do not deliver your material on schedule. Ask the same about photography: whether a shoot is included, whether stock will be used, and who holds the usage rights afterwards.
Ownership and ongoing costs
Two questions to ask every provider you talk to.
Who owns the website, the domain, and the accounts? You want the business to be the account holder, with administrator access and the ability to take a full export. Answers that get vague here are worth pressing on. The full list of accounts is in the guide on website and domain ownership.
What are the recurring costs? Hosting, maintenance, licenses, support. Ask what each covers, whether the price is fixed for a period, and specifically what you keep if you stop paying. A monthly arrangement is fine when it is a service. It is a different proposition when it is really a lease on your own website.
Ask what happens to your existing site
If you already have a website with any search visibility, this question separates providers quickly.
Ask how existing URLs will be handled, whether redirects will be mapped, and how content that currently earns traffic will be treated. Someone who answers confidently has done migrations before. Someone who looks blank is about to learn on your website, and businesses lose real rankings this way. The redesign guide covers what a careful migration involves.
What happens after launch
A website is not finished at launch, and the support arrangement often matters more than the build itself over five years.
- Can you make routine edits yourself, and will you be shown how
- What is the realistic response time for a request
- Who handles software updates, backups, and security
- What happens if the site goes down on a weekend
- Will analytics be set up, and will anyone explain what it says
Analytics deserves a specific mention. Without it, nobody can tell whether the project worked, which makes the next decision guesswork.
Warning signs
- Guaranteed rankings. Nobody controls Google’s results. A guarantee of first position, or of appearing in AI answers, is a promise about something the provider does not own.
- No written scope. A price with no itemized deliverables produces disputes later, and you will lose most of them.
- Unclear ownership. Covered above, and worth walking away over.
- Recurring fees nobody will itemize. Ask what the monthly charge buys. If the answer stays vague, assume it buys very little.
- No live work to show. Everyone starts somewhere, but you should know if you are the first.
- Pressure to sign quickly. Expiring discounts on custom work are a sales technique, not a deadline.
- Jargon instead of answers. A good provider can explain any decision in language you understand. If you leave a meeting less clear than you arrived, that is information.
Freelancer, small studio, or larger agency
There is no universally correct answer here, only trade-offs.
- A freelancer is usually the lowest cost with direct access to the person building. The risk is capacity and continuity if they get busy, ill, or move on.
- A small studio keeps direct contact while adding some redundancy and a wider skill set. Capacity is still finite.
- A larger agency brings specialists, formal process, and continuity, at higher cost. Small projects can end up with junior staff or low priority.
Local versus remote is a similar trade-off. A local provider can walk your job site, meet in person, and understands the market you sell into. A remote provider may offer specialized experience you cannot find nearby. For a business whose customers are all within an hour’s drive, local familiarity tends to be worth more than it looks on paper.
How to compare proposals fairly
Put them side by side on the same rows rather than reading each one on its own terms.
- Pages and features included
- Who writes content, and how many revision rounds
- Photography, and who owns the rights
- Search and migration work included
- Total first-year cost, build plus recurring
- Ownership terms
- Support after launch
- Timeline and what it depends on
Filled in honestly, this usually explains a price gap that looked inexplicable, and the cheaper proposal sometimes turns out to be the more expensive one. Detail on what drives website pricing is in a separate guide.
One last thing that is harder to put in a table. You are going to be working with this person for weeks, and then calling them for years. If communication is already awkward during the sales conversation, when they are trying hardest, it does not usually improve.
If you would like to see how we answer these questions, the about page covers how we work, the portfolio has live sites to click through, and you can start a conversation whenever you are ready. If another provider is the better fit for your project, we would rather you found that out now.