Questions to ask before hiring a web designer

  • hiring
  • web-designer
  • planning
  • website-redesign

Updated

Before you hire a web designer, ask who will own the site and its accounts, exactly what the price includes, how they'll protect your search traffic and accessibility, whether you can edit the site yourself, and what support looks like after launch. Good designers answer these readily. Vague answers on ownership or what's included are the warning signs.

Ownership and access

  1. Will the domain be registered in my name, in an account I control?
  2. Will I have my own Administrator login to the site?
  3. Who owns the design, the content, and the code when the project ends?
  4. Who holds the hosting account and the licenses for paid plugins? If they're on the designer's accounts, ask what happens if you part ways.
  5. Can I take the site to another developer or host later?

See Get your domain, hosting, and website logins from a former developer for why this matters.

Price and scope

  1. What exactly does the quote include? Number of page designs, rounds of revisions, content entry, photos, training.
  2. What costs extra? Ask for their hourly or change-request rate.
  3. What are the ongoing costs for hosting, licenses, and maintenance after launch?
  4. What's the timeline, and what do you need from us to keep to it? Content is the usual cause of delay.

See How much does a website redesign cost?

Content and SEO

  1. Who writes and enters the content?
  2. How will you keep our search traffic? Listen for a redirect plan for old page addresses. See Keep your SEO when you redesign.
  3. Will each page get its own SEO title and description, and will you set up Google Search Console?
  4. How fast will the site be on a phone? Ask to see PageSpeed results for sites they've launched.

Accessibility and legal

  1. What accessibility standard do you build to? WCAG 2.1 AA is the usual answer. Public bodies may be required to meet it. See ADA website compliance checklist.
  2. How do you handle cookies, analytics, and privacy? See Do I need a cookie banner?

Day-to-day use

  1. Can we edit text, images, and pages ourselves without breaking the design? Ask for a demo of the editor.
  2. Will you train our staff, and is there documentation?

After launch

  1. What support is included after launch, and for how long?
  2. Who does updates, backups, and security, and what does a maintenance plan include? See What's included in website maintenance.
  3. Can we talk to two or three recent clients?

Compare like with like

Send every designer the same short brief, so the quotes cover the same work. See Write a website redesign brief.

If you're comparing proposals and can't tell why one costs twice as much as another, ask each designer to walk you through what's included line by line before you decide.