Questions to ask a web designer, and the answers that should worry you

Why every list of questions to ask a web designer is incomplete

Design Powers is a web design and branding agency, and its 25 Questions to Ask Your Website Designer Before Hiring covers portfolio, services, budget fit, process, content, technical setup, support, and ownership, including "Do we own the site and its contents after it goes live?" It's also the only one of the three that answers its own questions, drawn from its own practice. What its 25 questions don't include, anywhere in the list: a question about a deposit or a payment schedule.

York and North Yorkshire Growth Hub is a public business-support organisation, not a design vendor. Its Ten questions to ask a website designer, published June 2, 2020, opens with "What is included in the cost of my website?" and also asks who owns the site design when it's done, whether you'll get original designs or templates, and what happens after the site launches. Its guidance is that a good quote should include everything, even the optional extras. Like the agency list, though, none of its ten questions asks about a deposit or what happens to money already paid.

Practical Ecommerce is an independent ecommerce publication with no design services to sell. Its 15 Questions to Ask a Web Designer, from January 26, 2016, is the only one of the three that asks about payment terms outright, deposit versus paying in full upfront, alongside revision limits, site editability, and post-launch maintenance. It gives questions only, with no model answers of its own. And it has its own blind spot, the mirror image of the other two: nowhere in its 15 questions is there one about who owns the site, the design, or the hosting account when the work is done.

Line up how the three actually differ:

A list of vetting questions inherits the blind spots of whoever wrote it. An agency's list is thorough on process and technical setup because that's where agencies compete for your business, and light on payment risk because that's not the scrutiny it wants to invite. A neutral organisation leads with cost because that's the complaint it hears most from the businesses it supports. A publication with no client relationship at stake is the one that asks about your deposit directly, and it is also the only one of the three with no ownership question at all. Each list guards a different flank and leaves a different one open. None of that makes any of the three dishonest. It means one list from one kind of author won't cover everything you need to ask, which is the reason to pull questions from more than one source rather than trusting a single list.

It's also the standard this article has to meet. Press is a web design studio, so the same incentive applies to us, and the grouped list below has its own omissions: it carries no questions about SEO, accessibility, or how you'll measure the site's success once it's live, ground the Design Powers and Growth Hub lists cover better, so pull those questions from them. The correction on offer here isn't a claim to a complete list, it's that our own answers, given later in this piece, are published on our own site rather than delivered once across a sales call.

What questions should I ask a website designer? Start with fit

Before money or scope, start with fit: has this designer actually done work like yours, who will you actually deal with once you sign, and what platform are they proposing and why.

Ask to see work for businesses in your industry or something genuinely comparable, not a general portfolio reel. Every project shown should be a working link you can click through yourself, not a screenshot in a slide deck. If a designer can't produce that, treat it as your answer.

Ask who your single point of contact will be and how the project actually gets run day to day, weekly calls, an async doc, a shared board, so you know before you sign whether the process fits how you work.

Ask what CMS or platform they build on and why for a project like yours, not just which one. The reasoning matters more than the name. A platform chosen because it's what the studio always uses is a different answer than one chosen because your project specifically needs you to self-edit or scale.

What skills must a web designer have?

Rather than a checklist of technical skills, look for evidence: the portfolio above should demonstrate the specific skill your project actually needs, ecommerce builds, accessibility, multilingual content, whatever applies, rather than general design ability on its own.

Money: the questions that protect your budget

These are the questions with the most improvised answers in a sales call. Get them answered before you talk price at all.

What exactly does the price include, and what's explicitly excluded? A good answer is a written quote that lists inclusions and names exclusions item by item, stock photography, copywriting, extra revision rounds, ongoing hosting. The Growth Hub's guidance, cited above, is essentially this: a good quote should include everything, even the optional extras. A disqualifying answer is a quote that can only state an hourly rate with no total estimate, or one that can't say what's excluded when you ask directly.

Is there a deposit, how much, and what happens to it if the project doesn't finish? A good answer names a specific number or percentage in writing, with a stated policy for what happens to it if the project stops partway. A disqualifying answer is full payment demanded before any work starts, or a deposit with no written refund policy at all.

What happens to money already paid if you walk away partway through? A good answer points to a policy in the contract, not a verbal assurance, on what's refundable and what already-delivered work you keep regardless. A disqualifying answer is "we'll figure it out," or one that contradicts what the contract actually says.

Get this in writing, and check whether the number is already published on the vendor's own site before you ask. For rate benchmarks so you know if a quote is in a reasonable range to begin with, see how much web designers charge.

Ownership: who actually owns the site when it's done

Design Powers asks this directly in its own list, "Do we own the site and its contents after it goes live?", and the Growth Hub list asks who owns the site design when it's done. Ownership is the group where a wrong answer costs you the most later, often because you don't find out until you try to leave.

Do you own the site, the content, and the domain outright? A good answer is an unambiguous yes, in writing, for all three separately, since they can end up owned by different parties. A disqualifying answer hedges on "content" or "design," since those are sometimes licensed rather than owned under cheaper page-builder contracts.

Does the hosting account stay in your name or the vendor's? A good answer is that the account is registered in your name and under your control from day one, or transferred to you at handover with full credentials. A disqualifying answer is a hosting account that stays in the vendor's name. That alone means your site's uptime, and your ability to leave, depends on a company you no longer have a contract with.

Do you get the source code, not just admin access to a page builder? A good answer is that you receive the actual source code or a full export on payment. A disqualifying answer is "you get access to the dashboard" as the entire response, with no mention of source code or an export path.

This is the group most often answered vaguely on a call and then contradicted by the actual contract, so get it in writing before you sign, and check first whether the vendor publishes an ownership policy on its own site at all. For what full ownership should actually include, see do I own my website.

Scope: what you're actually paying for

Custom build or templated, and what does that change about cost and timeline? A good answer names which one plainly and explains how that choice affects both price and delivery time for your specific project. A disqualifying answer is one that can't explain the tradeoff, or that calls a themed template "custom" without saying what was actually customized.

How many revision rounds are included, and what does an extra round cost? A good answer gives a specific number, with a definition of what counts as one round, a set of consolidated feedback, not each individual message back and forth. A disqualifying answer is unlimited revisions offered with no definition of a round. That's not generosity, it's unbounded scope with no way to know when the project is actually finished.

What exactly do you need to supply before work starts? A good answer is an itemized list, copy, photos, logo files, brand guidelines, given up front, so you know what's on you before the clock starts. A disqualifying answer is "we'll handle everything" with no list, which usually means stock content standing in for anything you didn't provide.

Ask for the round definition and the supply list in writing, and look on the vendor's own site first: a studio that publishes its process or its revision policy has already committed to a scope once. A verbal "don't worry about it" is not a scope document.

Aftercare: what happens after launch

Can you edit the site yourself, and is training or documentation included? A good answer is yes, with a named format, a walkthrough call, a written guide, so you're not guessing the first time you need to change a price. A disqualifying answer is "you can always call us" as the entire response to a self-edit question.

What does ongoing maintenance or support cost, and what's actually covered? A good answer states a monthly or annual figure with a list of what's included, security updates, backups, uptime monitoring, and what falls outside it. A disqualifying answer is "maintenance is included" that has no figure and no defined scope once you ask what happens after the first month.

What happens if something breaks after launch? A good answer names a response window and states plainly whether a fix is covered or billed separately. A disqualifying answer is no answer at all, or one that only gets defined once something has actually broken.

Get the maintenance scope and the break-fix answer in writing before launch, not after something goes down, and check whether the vendor publishes a maintenance or care plan with a price on its own site; a figure committed to in public is harder to inflate once you're locked in.

Ask for it in writing, not out loud

A verbal answer in a sales call costs the vendor nothing to give and leaves you nothing to hold them to. Ask for the same answers again by email or written directly into the proposal, and treat any answer that changes once it's in writing as the more honest one.

Before you even get on a call, check what the vendor already publishes on its own site. It's a fast pre-screen: a vendor who publishes its payment terms, price, or ownership policy has already committed to those numbers in public, which is a harder thing to walk back than something said out loud. Our own audit of eleven Singapore web design agencies found only two publish their payment terms anywhere on their own site, and Press is one of the two. Published answers are the exception, not the norm, which is exactly why it's worth asking for one directly rather than assuming a vendor's site already has it.

What Press publishes about itself

Press is a web design studio, so everything above applies to us the same way it applies to any vendor on this list. Here's how we answer this article's own questions, in writing, on our own site rather than in a sales call: there's no deposit, because we build the finished site first and show it to you free within five working days, before you've paid anything. If you keep it, the price is a flat $299, published, not "contact us for a quote." Source code is included on payment. Revisions are free for the first 10 days after purchase. None of that is a claim that these are the best answers on the market, it's one studio's answers held to the same standard set out above: specific, published, and checkable before you ever get on a call.

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