insights
Questions to Ask a Web Designer Before You Sign Anything
The questions to ask a web designer are the ones that tell you, before you sign anything, whether you are hiring a real partner or buying an expensive brochure: what does their own website look like, what are you actually paying for, do they understand sales and marketing, what is the real timeline, and do they hand you a finished, working site. Ask these five and the wrong designer disqualifies themselves on the spot.
Here is why it matters more than it used to. Your prospects go looking for a solution before they ever call you. They search, they research you, they research the companies you compete with, and by the time they land on your site, most of the deciding is already done. B2B buyers move through about 70 percent of their buying journey on their own, before they ever reach out to a seller. Your website is where that 70 percent happens. If it does not hold up under that kind of scrutiny, you are losing business you never knew you were in the running for.
So a website is not decoration. It is your number one sales tool. It is online every hour of every day, it never takes a break, and it never asks for a raise. The person you hire to build it is making a decision about your revenue, not your color scheme. Treat the hire that way.
Below are the five questions, in the order we ask them, and what a good answer sounds like.
What does the web designer’s own website look like?
Start here, because it is the cheapest test you will ever run. Go to their site and click around like a customer would.
How does it make you feel? Does it look credible. Do the links work. Do they show up on the first page when you search their name. Is the site current, or does it feel like it was last touched years ago. Any typos, any clumsy grammar. Does it load fast. Does it look right on your phone. Is there a way to reach them besides a single contact form, an email capture, a newsletter, anything that shows they understand how to turn a visitor into a lead.
A designer who has not done these things for their own business will not do them for yours. The work they show the world is the ceiling of what they will build for you, not the floor. If you do not like what you see, you have your answer. Move on.
What are you actually paying for?
A website is more than what shows up on the screen. The part that decides whether it sells lives underneath: the messaging, the way the story is laid out, the SEO, the page speed, the scannable content, the calls to action, the lead capture wired into a system you can actually use, the mobile experience. Most of that is invisible to a visitor and invisible in a cheap quote.
You get what you pay for, and the cheap version costs more later. The few dollars you save up front you pay back with interest when the site fails to do its job.
This is also where the platform question lives. The drag-and-drop builders are popular because they are fast to stand up. They are also hard to leave. If you are running a short campaign or a one-off project, a builder can be the right call. But if you are building the site that represents your business for the next five to ten years, build it on a platform you can grow into and own outright. Switching off a closed builder onto a serious platform later is slow and expensive, and you pay for the move on top of paying for the new site.
Do they understand sales and marketing?
This is the one most people skip, and it is the one that matters most. A beautiful site that does not understand selling is a very expensive way to lose customers politely.
Some designers want to do the branding and the visuals first and bolt on the selling later. Build it in that order and you are signing up for a redo, because the conversion logic, the way a visitor is moved from curious to convinced, has to be in the foundation, not painted on at the end. A real web project pulls together development, design, copywriting, SEO, analytics, lead-capture systems, funnel thinking, user experience, photography, video, and storytelling, all aimed at one outcome: turning a stranger into a customer.
If your designer does not think this way, you need a project manager on your side who does. Do not assume that knowing how to build a site means knowing how to make one sell. They are different skills, and the gap between them is where most marketing budgets quietly disappear.
Your website is always online. It never takes a break, and it never asks for a raise.
Tyler Kelley
What is the real timeline?
Ask how long it will take, and listen closely to the answer. If the proposal says three to six months, walk away. It does not take half a year to build a website. A timeline that long usually means you will spend most of it standing in line, waiting for your turn with a development team that is busy with everyone else.
Most builds and rebuilds run six to ten weeks. Ask when the work actually starts, not when the contract is signed, and ask what you will get to see along the way. You should review progress at every step, never wait for one big reveal. A reveal at the end is how you find out, too late, that the site missed the mark, after the budget is spent and the launch is on the calendar.
Is it a turn-key solution?
The last question is about who is holding the pieces when the dust settles. A finished site has a lot of moving parts, and you want to know which ones come with the build and which ones are surprise add-ons or outsourced to a stranger.
Does the agency want to buy the domain for you? Let them set it up, but make sure the domain is registered in your name and you own it. Your domain is your address on the internet, and you never want it held by someone else. Do they provide hosting? You can arrange your own, but it is simpler when the people who built the site keep it running. Are the creative services, the photography, the video, the copywriting, done in-house, or are they line items that appear later, or work farmed out to people you will never meet?
A turn-key partner hands you a finished, working site and the keys to it. Anything less and you are managing a project you thought you were paying someone else to manage.
So what are you really hiring?
Run all five questions and a pattern shows up. You are not hiring a designer to make something that looks nice. You are hiring someone to build the salesperson that works every hour you are asleep. The site that looks credible the moment a prospect lands on it, that loads fast and reads clean, that understands how to turn attention into a lead, and that you own outright when it ships.
The good ones answer these questions before you finish asking. We have built a lot of these, and we know the difference between a site that sits there and one that sells. If you are starting a web project and you are not sure where to begin, get in touch and let’s talk.
To go deeper on the message that makes a site convert, read our copywriting secrets. And to understand who that message should be speaking to, read how to build a buyer persona.
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