article · QUESTIONS TO ASK BEFORE HIRING A WEB DESIGNER

Ask These BeforeYou Sign.

Nine questions, and for each one the answer you want to hear. Every one of them is designed to find out whether you will be able to check the work later.

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Dr. Linda Silvestri & Dr. Angela Silvestri-Elmore, Co-authors, Saunders Pyramid to Success · 14 years · 300+ Las Vegas businesses · 5-star rated

drop: business owner interviewing a web designer in las vegas

01 · how do i choose a web designer

What decides which designer to hire.

Whether you can check the work. Portfolio, price and personality are all downstream of that.

You cannot judge a website by looking at it. It will look fine. Six months later you still will not know whether the money did anything, and the person who could tell you has moved on.

So the nine questions below are not about taste. They are about whether, in month four, you can open something dated and read what happened.

02 · questions to ask a web designer

Nine questions for a web designer.

Who actually touches the site

You want a name, and it should be the person in the room. If the answer is a team, ask which person and how you reach them. The gap between who sells and who builds is where the disappointment lives.

Who writes the copy

You want them to say they do. If you supply the words, the project stalls the week your quarter gets busy, and the delay is recorded as yours.

What happens the week after launch

You want a plan, not a handover. Launch is where you start learning what visitors do. A designer who disappears at launch sold you the least valuable part of the job.

Who owns the domain, the site and the accounts

You want the answer to be you, in writing, with logins in your name. Ask about the domain registrar, the hosting, the analytics property and the Google Business Profile. Owners get held hostage by exactly one of those four.

Can I see the last three sites you built, live

You want URLs, not screenshots in a deck, then check whether those businesses still use the site. A portfolio image proves a design existed. A live URL proves it survived.

How will I know it is working

You want a specific measure named before the build starts: new enquiries, booked consultations, form completions. If the answer is impressions or traffic, that is a number that can rise while your business does not.

Is the site built to be found, or just to look right

You want to hear about page structure, speed on a phone, and whether each service gets its own page. A beautiful single page site cannot rank for six services.

What does it cost, and what is not included

You want a number now, not after a discovery call. Then ask what is billed on top: hosting, edits, a care plan, a page added later. That is where a low quote becomes a high invoice.

How do I leave

You want thirty days and a full export. Ask early. The answer tells you how the whole engagement is designed, and a vendor who has never been asked will show it.

03 · web designer red flags

Five answers that end the conversation.

A guaranteed position in Google. Google itself warns against this, and nobody controls the ranking they are selling you.

A price that only exists after a call. If a number cannot be printed, it changes depending on how you sound on the phone.

The domain or the hosting stays in their account for convenience. That is not convenience.

The portfolio is screenshots and no live URLs.

You will be assigned an account manager and you never learn who does the work.

04 · what to ask about proof

How to ask a designer for proof.

The strongest thing a vendor can do is hand you work you can open without asking permission. Not a case study about the work. The work.

Here is mine. Published, live right now, every finding readable.

evidence

A full website audit, published in the open A published onsite SEO audit for a client Every SEO audit I have published

05 · hiring a web designer questions

Hiring a web designer questions.

What is the average cost to hire a web designer?

The market range is wide enough that an average is not useful to you. What is useful is the shape of the deal. I charge $1,000 a month for the Websites line, no setup fee, three months, then month to month, and the number is the same for everybody. Two services together are $1,799 and three are $2,499.

Should I hire a freelancer or an agency?

Both can work. A freelancer gives you the senior person and no bench. An agency gives you a bench and usually a junior on your account. The question to ask either one is who touches the site.

How long should a website take?

Ask for calendar dates rather than a duration, then ask what happens if you miss one. A start date and a launch date you both wrote down is worth more than any estimate.

What if I already have a site and I am not sure it needs replacing?

Get it audited before you spend anything. Half the sites I look at do not need rebuilding, they need four specific things fixed.

Do I need to sign a contract?

Not with me. Three months, then month to month, thirty days notice in writing, and you keep every asset and every login on the way out.

+ · keep reading

Get your current site audited first.

Before you interview anybody, get the current site scored. Then you ask these nine questions holding a ranked list of what is actually wrong.