By Adverito4 min read
Look at work you can actually open
The fastest filter is a portfolio of live sites. Not screenshots, not concept mockups — URLs you can open right now, on your own phone, ideally on a slow connection. Look at whether pages load quickly, whether navigation makes sense, whether the content has been kept current, and whether the site still works as a business tool: forms submit, numbers are clickable, product pages are accurate.
Ask for one or two projects similar to yours in size and complexity, and ask what problem the client actually had. A good studio can describe the starting point, the decisions made and what changed after launch without hiding behind adjectives. If every case study amounts to we designed a beautiful website, you have learned very little about how they work.
- Open at least three portfolio sites on your own phone before the next meeting.
- Test a contact form and a call button end to end.
- Ask what the site looked like before the project started.
Find out who will actually do the work
Agencies present with senior people and deliver with mixed teams — that is normal and sometimes the right call. What matters is that you know the shape of it before signing. Ask who writes the code, who designs, who you will speak to day to day, and whether any part of the work is outsourced. None of those answers is automatically disqualifying; a vague or evasive answer is.
Also ask what happens if your main contact leaves. If the project's knowledge sits in one person's head and one person's laptop, it carries risk that has nothing to do with your budget. Shared repositories, written documentation and a team that can cover each other are signs of a studio that intends to still be operating in three years.
You should own everything that is yours
Code, domain, hosting, analytics, advertising accounts, CMS access and design source files should be registered or delivered in your name — not the agency's. Before the project starts, write down who owns what and how you get it at the end, whether the end comes in two years or next month. Reputable firms put this in the agreement without being pushed.
- Domain registered to your organisation, not to an employee or the agency.
- Repository, hosting and analytics access granted to your accounts.
- Design source files and content included in the handover.
- A written statement of what you can take with you if the relationship ends.
Performance and SEO are part of the build, not an add-on
A site that looks correct but loads slowly or cannot be crawled is unfinished work. Ask how performance is handled during the build — image handling, script loading, font loading, caching — and how they will verify it before launch. Ask what happens to your existing URLs when the old site is replaced, because a redesign without a redirect plan quietly throws away years of accumulated rankings.
The basics should be non-negotiable: mobile-first layout, semantic HTML, unique titles and descriptions, an XML sitemap, analytics and Search Console connected before launch, and clean markup for structured data. Our website development page describes how we sequence this work; any company you evaluate should be able to explain theirs in similar detail.
Post-launch support should be written down
Launching is the beginning, not the end. Ask directly: what is covered free after launch, for how long, and what counts as a bug versus a new request? Who handles hosting renewals, security updates, backups and downtime? What is the response time if the site goes down on a Friday evening?
You do not need a heavyweight contract for this — you need clear answers. A warranty window, a named support contact and a stated backup routine are the minimum. If support is described only as we are always available, plan for what you will do the first time availability is tested.
Scope, price and the questions to ask before signing
A trustworthy proposal states what is included, what is explicitly excluded, the phases of work, the payment schedule tied to those phases, and how changes to scope will be handled. A vague total that covers everything you need tends to become expensive later, and the cheapest quote usually means either a thin scope or someone learning on your budget.
Take the answers, not the brochure, as your basis for comparison. Ask each shortlisted company the same questions in writing, and weight how clearly they respond more heavily than how polished the response looks.
- What is excluded from this price, and what would add to it?
- Who owns the code, domain and accounts at the end?
- Who will be doing the work day to day?
- What does support look like in month three, and in month twelve?
- How will we measure whether the site actually worked?