Most people hire a website developer once every five or six years, which isn't often enough to get good at it. The result is that the decision usually comes down to who replied fastest and whose portfolio looked nicest.
There's a better way to check, and it takes about ten minutes.
Check their live work, not their portfolio images
A portfolio full of screenshots proves nothing. A screenshot can't be slow, can't be broken on a phone, and can't have gone offline two years ago. Ask for links to sites that are live right now, then open them.
- Open two or three on your own phone, on mobile data rather than wifi. That's the connection your customers are on.
- Time how long the first one takes to become useful. Over three seconds is a problem.
- Tap the phone number. It should dial. It's astonishing how often it doesn't.
- Fill in a contact form on one. If nothing arrives, that site is losing its owner work right now.
- Run one through Google PageSpeed Insights. You don't need to understand the report; the score out of 100 for mobile tells you enough.
If someone won't give you live links, that's your answer.
Who owns what once you have paid
This is the most expensive mistake in the whole process, and it costs nothing to avoid. Ask these four questions before you pay anything:
- Whose name is the domain registered in? It must be yours. Not theirs, not their agency's. A domain registered to your developer is a hostage.
- Whose account is the hosting in? Either yours, or theirs with a written agreement that you can move it whenever you want.
- Who owns the code and the content when you have paid? You should, in writing.
- If we part ways, what do I walk away with? The answer should be everything. If it's 'nothing, the site stops working', you're renting.
None of this means a maintenance arrangement is bad. Plenty of businesses are happier paying someone to handle hosting and edits. It means the arrangement should be a choice you can reverse.
Find out what's included
Two quotes that look thousands apart are often the same price once you find out what one of them leaves out. Get specific:
- Who writes the words? If it's you, that's a real job and it will delay the launch.
- Where do the photos come from? Stock photography of a smiling stranger in a hard hat fools nobody.
- Is the Google Business Profile set up, or is that extra?
- How many rounds of changes are included, and what happens after that?
- Who fixes it if something breaks a month after launch?
- Can you change your own hours, prices, and menu without paying?
Web designer, website developer, or agency?
The titles get used loosely and the distinction matters less than people think. Design is the look, the layout, and what the pages say. Development is the code: speed, security, forms, booking, payments. A brochure site needs both. What matters is that they're handled together, because the handoff between a design and a build is where projects lose weeks.
An agency is worth the premium when the project is complex, when you need several specialists at once, or when there's real brand risk. For a ten-page site that needs to rank locally and take calls, an agency is mostly overhead you're funding.
Red flags
- Guaranteed number one on Google. Nobody can guarantee this. Anyone claiming it's either lying or about to rank you for a phrase nobody searches.
- No written scope. If what you're buying isn't written down, disagreements later are unwinnable.
- They register the domain in their own name. The worst one on this list. Whoever holds the registration controls whether your site stays reachable.
- A monthly fee with no exit. Ask what happens if you stop paying.
- No live examples. Or examples that turn out to be templates with different logos.
- They never ask about your business. Someone who doesn't want to know who your customers are and why they buy can't write a page that sells.
The questions worth asking
Copy these into your first email. The answers will separate people faster than any amount of portfolio browsing.
- Can I see three sites you built that are live now?
- Who owns the domain, the hosting, and the code when I have paid in full?
- What's your all-in price, and what's not included?
- How long from deposit to launch?
- Who writes the copy and where do the photos come from?
- What happens if I need a change in six months?
- Who will I actually be talking to during the build?
If you would rather see the work before any of this, we build a free, working demo of your new site first, so there's something real to judge. Start there, or read how long a website should take.