comparison · HOW TO CHOOSE A WEB DESIGNER

Pick The One YouCan Check.

I build websites for businesses in The Valley, so I know which promises hold up. This is the version I would want if I were hiring instead of being hired.

Get Free Audit Book a Call

“Justin's expertise, responsiveness, and genuine investment in our success have been evident throughout this process. We are truly grateful.”

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

01 · how much should a web designer cost

What a web designer costs.

Prices in this category are not published, and that is deliberate. What you can compare is the shape of the money instead of the number, because the shapes carry different risks.

A project fee front loads everything and ends at launch, which is the day you discover what maintenance costs. A monthly spreads it and keeps somebody responsible, but only if it buys work rather than hosting. A builder subscription is the smallest bill and the biggest claim on your own attention.

A new site with no search work behind it earns nothing, so search is the question right behind this one. With me they are two separate lines at the same price: the website is $1,000 a month, search is $1,000 a month, and both together are $1,799.

Here is the honest disqualification. If you have fewer than about ten pages, nothing to book, and nobody searching for what you do, a site builder handled by whoever in your office is most patient is the correct answer.

What a web designer costs.
how it is priced	What you pay	What goes wrong
Project fee	A deposit, then milestones, ending at launch	Launch day is the end of the relationship and the start of the maintenance question nobody costed
Project fee plus retainer	The build, then a monthly on top	The monthly often buys hosting and reporting rather than work, and the distinction is rarely in writing
Monthly, no build fee	$1,000 a month for the Websites line with me	It is one person, so a very large build is the wrong fit and I will say so before you sign
DIY builder	A software subscription and your own weekends	The build finishes and the marketing never starts, which is where most DIY sites stop

evidence

A full site I designed and built, live A brand and storefront I built end to end

02 · what a web designer does

What a web designer does.

A web designer decides what a visitor sees, in what order, and what you want them to do next. Everything else sold under the same words is a different job, and knowing the difference is most of what protects you here.

Four separate jobs get quoted as one, so ask which of these you are buying.

Design

The layout, the type, the images, and the path a visitor takes from landing to booking. This is what people mean when they say the site looks dated, and it is the cheapest of the four to change.

Development

The code and the setup that make the design work: forms that send, pages that load on a phone, payments that clear. Two sites that look identical can be built well or badly, and you find out in month six.

Hosting and maintenance

The server it lives on, the software updates, the backups, and whoever picks up the phone when it goes down. This is a monthly bill forever and it is frequently left out of a quote on purpose.

Getting it found

Search, ads, email, whatever brings people to the thing you just paid for. A designer is not responsible for this unless you hired them for it, and a beautiful site nobody visits is the most common way this money gets wasted.

03 · what to look for in a web designer

What to look for in a designer.

Two things you can verify in twenty minutes and three you have to ask about.

Verify first. Open three sites from their portfolio on your phone. If any are dead, unbranded or slow, you have your answer without a meeting. Then look at whether any of those businesses resemble yours in size, because a firm that only shows national brands is telling you who they staff for.

Then ask about the three that never appear on a website.

Who writes the words. Copy decides whether anyone books, and the most common reason a build stalls is that nobody agreed who was writing it.

What is excluded. Not what is included, which every proposal lists. Ask what is not, in writing, and watch how comfortable the answer is.

What happens after launch, and at what price. A site is not a delivery, it is a thing that breaks quietly on a Saturday.

Whether the work will be checkable later. Ask what you will be able to open in month three to see what changed in month one.

Whose name is on the domain, the hosting and the analytics. It should be yours, from the first day, with the logins in your possession.

04 · questions to ask a web designer

Questions to ask a web designer.

Ask all of these before you pay a deposit. The exclusion list and the going quiet question are the two that predict how the project ends.

What is explicitly not included in this price?

Who writes the copy, and what happens if I do not send it?

How many pages and how many rounds of revisions?

What happens if I go quiet for three weeks because work blows up?

Is the site built so I or anyone else can edit it later, or does every change come back to you?

What does hosting and maintenance cost after launch, and who is on call?

Whose name is on the domain, the hosting and the analytics?

What are you doing so the site can actually be found, and is that in this price or a separate one?

Can I speak to a client you built for two years ago?

05 · web design red flags

Web design red flags.

No written scope. If nothing states the page count, nothing states when it is done, and it never is.

The domain or hosting registered to them. This is the single most common way a business ends up unable to leave.

A price that only exists on a call, or a quote that arrives with no breakdown.

A dead portfolio. Click three. If two are gone, the work did not survive.

Nobody asks what the site is supposed to make happen. If the first conversation is entirely about look and never about bookings, calls or forms, you are commissioning a picture.

A promise about Google. Design work does not come with a ranking, and anyone who says it does is quoting a number they do not own.

Everything runs through one account manager and you never meet the person building it.

06 · common questions about choosing a web designer

Web designer questions.

What are red flags when hiring a designer?

A portfolio of sites you cannot visit, no clear answer on who is doing the work, and a quote with no line for what happens after launch. The biggest one is a designer who registers your domain or hosting in their own name.

How much does SEO cost once the site is built?

$1,000 a month here, and the site and the search work are separate jobs even when one person does both. A beautiful site nobody can find is the most common thing I get called to fix, so budget for being found before you budget for being redesigned again.

What are the 5 golden rules of web design?

There is no official list, and the versions circulating online are teaching aids rather than a standard. The five that actually decide whether a business site works: it loads fast on a phone, it says what you do in the first line, the next step is obvious on every screen, it can be found in search, and someone can edit it without calling a developer. The rest is taste.

How much should I pay a web designer?

Enough that the person doing it is senior, and structured so somebody is still responsible after launch. Almost nobody in this category publishes a price. Mine is $1,000 a month for the Websites line, three months, then month to month, no setup fee, covering the build, the conversion work, hosting and maintenance. Add search and the two lines together are $1,799.

What are the 7 C's of web design?

A framework from e-business teaching, usually listed as content, context, community, customization, communication, connection and commerce. It is a useful checklist for a student and not much use in a hiring decision. Ask instead who writes the content, whether the next step is obvious, and whether anyone is responsible for the site being found.

Do I need a new site or just a better one?

If the site looks dated and the phone still rings, you need design work. If the site looks fine and nothing arrives, a rebuild will change nothing, and the problem is that too few of the right people are seeing it. Most of the calls I get are the second described as the first.

How long does a website take?

Weeks, and the schedule is decided by how fast content and approvals come back rather than by the building. The projects that run long are the ones where nobody was assigned to write the words.

See what this would find on your website.

Free, in minutes. Same-day reply from Justin, personally.