How to choose a web designer (without getting burned).

Most people hire a web designer exactly once and have no frame of reference for what a good engagement looks like. They don't know what questions to ask, what a fair price looks like, or what the warning signs are before they hand over a deposit. By the time they realize something is wrong — the timeline has slipped, revisions aren't going anywhere, the site doesn't match what they described — they're already committed.

This note is not about finding the cheapest option or the most impressive portfolio. It is about picking someone who will actually build what you need, communicate clearly while they're doing it, and leave you with a site you can use when they're done.

Why this decision feels harder than it is

Web design is a credence good — you can't evaluate the quality of the work until after it's delivered, and even then you may not know if it's actually good until you see whether it converts visitors into customers. That information asymmetry is what makes the decision feel risky. You're spending money on something you can't fully evaluate in advance, from someone you've never worked with before.

The good news is the signals that predict a good outcome are visible before you hire. They live in the portfolio, the proposal, the contract, and the first conversation. You don't have to guess — you have to know what to look for.

What a portfolio actually tells you

Most business owners look at a portfolio and ask "does this look good?" That's the wrong question. Design quality is table stakes for anyone worth hiring. The useful questions are:

• Have they worked with businesses in your situation? A designer who has built sites for service businesses — contractors, consultants, local shops — understands the specific goals: lead capture, local SEO, trust-building before the first call. A designer whose portfolio is all e-commerce or SaaS products may not. Neither is better in the abstract; the question is whether their experience aligns with your problem.
• Can you see the results, not just the design? A designer who talks about what the site achieved — "this client saw a 30% increase in form submissions" or "the new site started appearing in local results within six weeks" — is thinking like a business tool, not an art project. If every case study describes how beautiful the site is but says nothing about what it did for the business, that's a signal about what they optimize for.
• Are the sites still live and functional? Open the portfolio links. If half of them are dead or broken, that's information about the designer's relationship with their clients after launch — or about how carefully they maintain their own portfolio.

Red flags that should make you pause

These are not automatic disqualifiers, but each one is worth asking a direct question about:

• No written scope before a deposit. Any designer who asks for money before providing a written list of what they will build — which pages, which features, how many revision rounds — is either disorganized or setting up a situation where scope can drift in their favor. A paragraph description is not a scope. A line-item list of deliverables is a scope.
• Vague pricing with no breakdown. "It'll be around $3,000–$5,000 depending on what you need" with no further breakdown usually means the designer doesn't know what you need yet — which means they're guessing about the cost. A fixed-price proposal should come after a discovery conversation, not before.
• No examples of work in your category. A portfolio with no service business sites isn't a hard no, but it's worth asking: "Have you built sites for businesses like mine? What was the specific challenge?" The answer will tell you whether they understand the problem or are treating it like any other build.
• Slow or unclear communication early on. The proposal and first email exchanges are the most responsive a designer will ever be — they're trying to win the work. If it takes four days to get a response during this stage, it will be worse after they have your money.
• No discussion of post-launch. What happens when something breaks? Who manages platform updates? If the designer has no answer for what comes after the site goes live, you're building a dependency on someone with no plan for maintaining it.

Questions to ask before you sign

You don't need an exhaustive list, but these five questions surface most of the information you need:

1. Can you walk me through a recent project from contract to launch? This question reveals communication style, timeline management, and how they handle revision rounds. Listen for specifics — how many rounds did it take, what caused delays, how did they handle a client who changed their mind mid-project.
2. What do you need from me, and when? A designer who knows what they need (content, photography, copy, brand assets) and has a clear onboarding process is easier to work with than one who "figures it out as we go." Unclear onboarding usually means unclear project management.
3. What does a revision round cover? Get this in writing. Unlimited revisions is not a feature — it usually means the designer hasn't thought through project boundaries, and it leads to scope creep on both sides.
4. Who owns the final files and the domain? You should own the domain. You should have access to all the final design files and source code. If a designer retains ownership of any asset, that's a negotiation, not a standard practice.
5. What does your post-launch support look like? Whether it's a 30-day support window, an optional maintenance retainer, or "you're on your own" — you need to know before signing. The answer isn't the point; knowing the answer in advance is.

The thing that most people skip

Most people evaluate designers entirely on portfolio and price. Those are table stakes. The thing that actually predicts whether a project goes well is fit — does this person understand your business, your customers, and what you're trying to accomplish, or are they pattern-matching to a template they've built before?

The clearest test is the first real conversation. Did they ask about your goals and your customers before showing you examples? Did they push back on anything that seemed like a bad fit? Did they offer a concrete recommendation, or did they say they could "do whatever you need"? The designers who ask good questions in the first conversation are the ones who ship sites that work in the real world.

If you want a direct conversation about what a website project should look like for your specific business, send a brief and I'll tell you exactly what makes sense and what doesn't before any money changes hands. If you want to understand what the finished product should do before picking anyone, the services page covers the specific outcomes we build toward.