How to choose a web design agency
A website rebuild usually starts with a problem that got too big to ignore: leads slowing, a site that embarrasses you on a phone, or a platform nobody can update. Here is how to pick who fixes it.
Start with the problem, not the portfolio
Pretty work is easy to find and tells you almost nothing about whether an agency can solve your problem. Before looking at anyone, write down what the site has to do: generate inquiries, take applications, work in more than one language, connect to a system you already run.
Then ask each agency how they would approach that specific thing. The answers separate people quickly.
Ask who actually does the work
In a lot of agencies the person who sells the project is not the person who builds it, and sometimes the person who builds it does not work there. That is not automatically a problem, but you should know before signing.
Ask who writes the code, who writes the copy, and who you will talk to when something breaks in month eight.
A portfolio tells you three things, and none of them is quality
It tells you what kind of work they take on, whether they have worked in your industry, and whether the sites are still live. That last one is worth checking: open the links.
What it cannot tell you is whether those sites performed. Ask directly what happened after launch. An agency that measures its work will have an answer, even if it is a modest one.
Find out what happens after launch
Most of a website’s life happens after the build. Ask what support looks like, what it costs, how updates are handled, and what happens if you want to make changes yourself.
Ask specifically whether your own team can edit the site without calling anyone. For a lot of businesses that single answer decides the platform.
The contract terms that matter more than the design
Three things are worth settling in writing before work starts.
- Who owns the site, the code and the content when the relationship ends
- Whether the hosting, domain and analytics are in accounts you control
- What happens to the work in progress if either side walks away
Things worth asking twice about
Guaranteed rankings, which nobody can offer, because Google does not sell positions in organic results. A quote given before anyone has asked what the site needs to do. A proposal with no mention of what happens after launch.
None of these are proof of bad faith. They are all reasons to slow down and ask a second question.
On budget
Website costs vary enormously with scope, and any agency quoting before understanding the scope is guessing. What you can reasonably expect early is a range and the reasoning behind it: what drives the number up, what would bring it down, and which parts are optional.