Hiring a website designer is hard when you cannot judge design or code yourself. The good news is that you do not have to. You need to judge whether a designer understands your business, works in a way you can check, and leaves you owning what you paid for. This guide gives you the questions and the tests to do exactly that.
Decide what you need before you search
Write half a page before you contact anyone:
- What the site must do for the business: calls, bookings, quote requests, online sales.
- Who your customers are and what they search for.
- The pages you think you need, and the features that must work, such as booking or payments.
- Who will write the words and supply the photos.
- Your budget range and the date that matters.
Designers who receive this send better proposals, and you get a fixed list to compare them against.
Website builder, freelancer or studio
| Option | A good fit when | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| A website builder you run yourself | You have more time than budget and need a simple site | Your own hours, design limits and slow mobile pages from heavy templates |
| A freelancer | The site is small and well defined, and their past work matches what you need | Availability, and who looks after the site when they move on |
| A studio | The site has to bring in business, needs design and development together, or has real features | Find out who actually does the work on your project |
Test a portfolio in ten minutes
Pick three sites from the designer’s portfolio and test them yourself:
- Open each one on your phone. Is it easy to read and use? Does it appear quickly?
- Run each through Google’s PageSpeed test, or our free site check. A designer whose own work scores in the red on mobile will probably build you the same.
- Find the main action on each site, such as call, book or buy. Is it obvious within a few seconds?
- Check that the sites are still live and still look like the portfolio screenshots.
- Ask for one client you can talk to, and ask that client what happened after launch.
Beautiful screenshots prove a designer can design. These tests show whether the work holds up in daily use.
Twelve questions to ask
- Who will design and build the site, and will I talk to them directly?
- How do you learn about my business before you design anything?
- Who writes the copy?
- Which platform do you recommend, and why for my business?
- Will I be able to edit text and photos myself?
- What happens to my current pages and search traffic?
- How do you test speed and mobile use before launch?
- How many rounds of revisions are included?
- What is the timeline, and what do you need from me to keep it?
- Who owns the design, the code, the domain and the hosting once it is paid for?
- What support do you offer after launch, and what does it cost?
- How will we know the site is working? What will you measure?
What a fair proposal includes
- A scope: the page types, features and integrations, listed one by one.
- Who provides copy, photos and logins.
- Milestones, and what you review at each one.
- A price for that scope, and what would change it.
- Ownership terms: the site is yours once it is paid for.
- Launch steps: redirects for old pages, Search Console, analytics if you want it, and backups.
Red flags
- A price before they have asked a single question about your business.
- The domain or hosting registered in their name.
- A promise of first-page Google rankings by a certain date.
- No live examples, or examples that are all the same template.
- No plan for your existing pages and search traffic.
- You cannot change anything on the site without paying them.
What “affordable” should mean
An affordable website is one that pays for itself, not the cheapest quote. A cheap site that loads slowly and hides the phone number costs more in lost enquiries than it ever saved. When you compare prices, compare what each quote includes against the lists above, then ask which one is most likely to bring in work.
We design and build websites for small businesses and startups, measure every project before and after, and hand over a site you own once it is paid for. See our web development service, our work, or start with a free site check.