Most businesses pick a web agency the same way they pick a restaurant they have never been to. Here are 8 questions that separate agencies who will grow your business from ones who will take your money and disappear.
Most business owners pick a web design agency the same way they pick a restaurant they have never been to: they look at the photos, check the price, and go with their gut. Sometimes it works out. More often, they are back at square one six months later with a website that looks fine but does nothing for the business.
The problem is not that there are too many bad agencies. The problem is that most clients do not know what questions to ask before signing anything.
Here are eight questions that separate agencies who will grow your business from agencies who will take your money and disappear.
The first red flag is an agency that jumps straight to colours, layouts, and portfolio examples without asking what you are actually trying to achieve. A website is a business tool. Before a single design decision is made, a good agency needs to understand who your customers are, what action you want them to take, and what success looks like six months after launch.
If the first call is mostly them talking about their process and their work rather than asking about yours, that tells you everything you need to know.
A beautiful website that no one finds is a very expensive brochure. Ask any agency you are considering to show you live examples of their work and search for those sites on Google. Do they appear for relevant terms? Do they load quickly on mobile?
SEO and performance are not things you can bolt on after a site is built. They have to be engineered in from the start. If an agency cannot show you evidence that their builds perform in search, assume they do not build with SEO in mind. Our post on why websites fail to rank on Google covers exactly what to look for.
This one catches people off guard. Some agencies build your site on their own hosting infrastructure, use proprietary platforms, or retain ownership of the code. When you want to leave or make changes they have not quoted for, you have very little leverage.
You should own your domain, your hosting account, and your codebase outright. Get this in writing before you sign anything. A good agency has no reason to say no.
Google uses page speed as a ranking signal. Slow sites rank lower, load poorly on mobile, and lose visitors before the page even finishes loading. Ask any agency what their average Core Web Vitals scores look like on completed projects and whether they can run a live test on one of their recent builds.
If they look blank or change the subject, they are not optimising for performance. If they give you specific numbers and explain what they do to achieve them, that is a strong signal you are talking to a team that understands the technical side of the work.
Every time you need to update a team member's photo or change a service description, you should not need to raise a ticket and wait three days. A properly built site gives you the ability to make routine content changes without touching code.
Ask specifically what the editing experience looks like for a non-technical person. If the answer involves a custom dashboard only they understand, or a page builder that requires training, factor that dependency into your decision.
Many agencies go quiet after launch. Bugs surface, emails go unanswered, and the relationship that felt warm during the sales process evaporates the moment the invoice clears. Ask upfront what post-launch support looks like, whether there is a defined handoff process, and who your point of contact is once the site goes live.
A written scope of what is included after delivery protects you. If an agency cannot tell you clearly what happens after launch, that is your answer.
An agency that mainly builds portfolio sites for creatives is not automatically the right choice for a financial services firm or a care provider. Sector knowledge matters. The vocabulary, the compliance considerations, the conversion psychology, and the audience behaviour are different across industries.
Look at their case studies. Do any of them look like your business, your sector, or your goals? If the answer is no, ask them directly how they approach projects outside their usual work, and judge their answer carefully.
"Starting from" and "approximately" are the words that precede budget overruns. Before any work begins, you should have a written, itemised quote that tells you exactly what is included, what is not, and what triggers additional charges.
A fixed-price project with a clear scope protects both sides. If an agency is reluctant to commit to a number, it usually means they have not thought the project through carefully enough, or they plan to recover margin through change requests later.
At KadoshDev, every project starts with a scoping call where we spend most of the time asking questions, not pitching. We deliver fully owned codebases, build on platforms our clients can update themselves, and provide a written handoff document with every project.
Our case studies show the full range of what we build and the results they produced. If you want to see how we approach a project like yours, book a call and bring this checklist with you.
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Book a 30-minute call. Tell us which service you need: design, dev, automation, SEO, content or brand. We'll come back with scope, timeline and price. One service or several, your call.