How to choose a web design agency: six checks to run before you sign

How to choose a web design agency: the short answer

To choose a web design agency, judge it on what you can check before you sign, not on how good the pitch looks. Test its live client sites on your phone, look the company up on the public register, and call a past client you picked yourself. Then meet the person who would build your site, read the proposal for what it assumes, and get ownership in writing.

This guide is for founders and operations leads at UK and EU companies choosing between agencies for a new website. None of the six checks needs technical knowledge, and you can run most of them from your phone.

We're a studio in Tirana building websites for companies in the UK, France and Albania. That puts us on the side of the table that gets checked. Our two London case studies link to the live sites, so you can run these checks on our work too.

Choose on evidence that's expensive to fake

At the moment you buy, you can't judge an agency's code or its process. The agency knows this. That gap is where a polished pitch wins work it can't back up.

Generating something that looks finished has never been easier, and that's the problem. A mock-up of your homepage with your logo on it costs an agency very little to make, and AI tools make it cheaper still. It proves the agency can make a page look finished, but not whether the form sends, the site stays fast, or anyone answers your email in month three.

So sort the evidence by what it would cost to fake, and put most of your weight on the costly kind.

The costly rows are the checks in the rest of this guide.

Test the live sites on your own phone

Ask for links to three live sites the agency built, and open them on your phone. A screenshot can't fail a test. Google ranks sites on their mobile version, so that's the version that matters. Then run four tests on each site.

1. Paste the address into PageSpeed Insights. Where Chrome has recorded enough visits, it shows how the page loaded for real users over the previous 28 days. Google counts a result as good when the main content loads within 2.5 seconds and the page responds to a tap within 200 milliseconds. The layout shift score should be 0.1 or less.
2. Spend five minutes on the W3C's Easy Checks, written for people who aren't accessibility experts. They cover page titles, text alternatives for images, headings, colour contrast, keyboard focus and zoom. The W3C says a page can pass them and still have serious barriers. Treat a fail as a finding and a pass as a first look.
3. Find the phone number, the WhatsApp link or the form, and walk the path to an enquiry. Stop before you press send, because these are real businesses.
4. Read the case study. Does it say what was built and why, or does it only show pictures?

The fourth test tells you most about how an agency thinks. Our ES Construction case study explains that WhatsApp sits level with the phone number because, for a London builder, it's often the first contact.

The Safe Waterproofing Systems case study puts testimonials where a hesitant buyer reaches them, and says why: damp proofing customers are usually anxious and comparing several firms at once. You can disagree with a reason. You can't argue with a screenshot.

Treat a percentage in a case study as a claim until the client confirms it. Ours carry no percentages. They say what we built and why, and link to the live site.

Look up the company, then call a client you chose

A UK agency that trades as a limited company is on the Companies House register, and the basic record is free for anyone to see. It shows the registered address, the date of incorporation, current and past officers, the filing history and any insolvency information. Search for the company named on the contract, which isn't always the name on the website.

Four things are worth a minute each:

• How long the company has traded. Young isn't a bad sign on its own, but the date should match the story in the pitch.
• Whether the directors are people you'll meet.
• Whether accounts arrive on time, or the record shows overdue filings.
• The directors' other companies. A trail of dissolved agencies with similar names deserves a question.

For an agency in the EU, the European e-Justice Portal searches the registers of limited companies in every EU country, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. For an agency elsewhere, use that country's own register. Our guide to working with a studio in Albania shows how for Albania.

Then read the reviews on Google and on directories such as Clutch, and call a past client. Choose the client yourself: pick a site from the portfolio and ask the agency to introduce you. A reference the agency picks is likely its happiest client. Ask four questions.

1. Would you hire them again for the same job?
2. What went wrong, and what did the agency do about it?
3. Is the domain in your company's name, and do you hold the top role on each account?
4. Who did you deal with day to day, and did they build the site?

Some clients decline, and a good agency will offer another. An agency that won't make any introduction has answered the question for you.

Meet the person who would build your site

At many agencies, the people who pitch and the people who build are different. You'll spend months with the second group. Before you sign, meet the people who will design, write and build your site, and ask them what they would do first.

Then ask four questions:

• Who designs the site, who writes the copy, who builds it, and who answers after launch?
• Is any of the work passed to freelancers or another company, and where are they?
• How do you use AI, and who checks its output before I see it?
• How will I see progress: written updates, and a staging site I can click through?

The second question has a legal edge. If the agency hosts your site or can read the enquiries it collects, it processes personal data for you. The ICO's guidance says a processor shouldn't bring in a sub-processor without your prior written authorisation. A good agency names its subcontractors before you ask.

Listen to what they ask you, too. An agency that asks about your customers and your enquiries before it talks about colours is designing for your business. One that tells you something you don't need has just talked itself out of work. That's the most honest signal a pitch can give.

Here are our own answers, for comparison. You talk directly to the engineers writing the code, with no account manager in between. You get a written scope before work starts, a written update every week and a shared staging site.

AI does most of our production and none of the direction. A person makes the architecture, interface and copy decisions, and a person reviews the output before you see it.

For more questions to put to any developer, with what a good answer sounds like, see questions to ask before you hire a software developer.

Send one brief, then read each proposal for its assumptions

Send every agency on your shortlist the same brief, so the proposals answer the same question. Our website brief template walks through one, section by section.

A good proposal repeats your problem back in its own words before it offers anything. Then it lists every page, who writes the copy, each integration described by what it does, what's excluded, and how you'll see progress. When one proposal is far shorter than the rest, the missing lines are usually work you'll discover later. Our guide to what sets the price of a website in the UK lists the lines a proper quote should include.

Don't count on the law to fill the gaps. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 covers business contracts for services. It implies that the agency will work with reasonable care and skill, and within a reasonable time if no date is agreed.

The Act says nothing about how many pages you get, who writes them or who owns the result. That has to be in the proposal, and then in the contract.

Put ownership in the contract, not in a promise

Settle ownership before you sign. After launch, you're asking for it from a weaker position, with more to lose.

Under UK law, the agency owns the copyright in the design and code it creates. A transfer to you only counts if it's in writing and signed by the agency. Paying the invoice doesn't move it.

Subcontracting adds a wrinkle. A freelancer who built part of your site owns that part unless they assigned it to the agency, and the agency can't pass on rights it doesn't hold. Ask it to confirm in writing that it does. Then ask for four things in the contract:

1. Copyright in the site assigned to your company on final payment.
2. The domain registered in your company's name.
3. Hosting, analytics and the site's admin in your company's name, with the agency added as a user.
4. A full working copy of the site on request, and written notice and handover terms if you leave.

Our guide to whether you own your website turns these into five checks for a site you already have, with the fix for each gap.

Our standard is the same for every client. Your domain, hosting, code repository and documentation sit in your accounts. We build on our own infrastructure while the work is under way, then transfer everything at handover. You own the site; our name appears as the studio that built it.

If an agency won't write its answer down, assume the answer is no.

Red flags that should end the conversation

Some warning signs deserve a question. These deserve a polite goodbye. Our guide to website costs covers the red flags in a quote; these are about the agency itself.

• A first contact by unsolicited email, listing what's wrong with your site. Google's advice on hiring help with search warns against exactly this.
• A promised ranking, or a claimed special relationship with Google. The same page says no one can guarantee a top ranking.
• No way to find out who will build the site, or only ever the salesperson in the room.
• A portfolio of screenshots, with no live links that work.
• A company on the contract that isn't on the register, or has overdue accounts.
• No introduction to any past client.
• No written commitment that copyright, the domain and the accounts will be in your name.
• Pressure to sign this week to keep a discount.
• No plain explanation of what the agency will do. Google's page flags firms that are secretive about their plans, and the test works as well for web design.

When you don't need an agency at all

An agency is the wrong buy for some jobs, and it's better to know before you spend a week on pitches.

• You're a sole trader with one service and plenty of word-of-mouth work. A Google Business Profile and a one-page site on Wix or Squarespace may be enough for now. Our guide to websites for builders and tradespeople covers that setup.
• Your current site is fast and brings enquiries, but reads badly. A copywriter may fix it without a rebuild.
• You want a small change to a site your current agency knows well. Staying costs less than switching.
• The project needs customer logins or online bookings. That's a web application, so you're hiring a software developer, and our guide on how to choose a software development company fits better.
• You can't yet say who the site is for or what it should make them do. Write the brief first, because no agency can decide that for you.
• You're unsure whether to rebuild or fix what you have. Get an audit and a written recommendation first. That's how we start when we're asked to take over a site, and sometimes the answer is that you don't need us yet.

This week, take your shortlist of three and run the quickest checks on each. Open three of its live sites on your phone and look the company up on the register. Then ask for a call with the person who would build your site. The agency that makes all three easy has answered most of your questions before the pitch starts.

Questions

Should I choose a local web design agency?

Local helps when you want regular workshops in person, or when the work needs someone on site. Otherwise the checks in this guide matter more than the distance. Most of our work is cross-border, and it runs on written scopes, weekly written updates and a shared staging site. Our guide to working with a software studio in Albania covers what changes when your agency is abroad, which is mostly paperwork.

Should I ask agencies for free design concepts before choosing one?

We'd advise against it. A free concept shows what an agency makes before it knows your customers, and it rewards whichever agency has the most spare time. Ask instead to walk through a past project: what the client asked for, what the agency built, and one thing it advised against. That shows you how it thinks, which a concept can't.

Is it a bad sign if an agency won't give a price on the first call?

No. A price given before anyone has asked about your pages, your copy and what the site connects to is a guess. Expect a written quote once the agency has read your brief, with lines you can compare against the other quotes. The bad sign is a quote with one total and nothing underneath it.

How we wrote this: drafted with AI, then checked and edited by the people who build our projects. Figures come from our own work or from the linked sources.