Choosing a website designer sounds simple until three quotes land in your inbox and all three seem to promise the same thing.
Professional website. Mobile friendly. SEO. Fast delivery. Great design.
The differences usually show up later.
One person owns the domain. Another has built the site with a page builder you cannot edit. Another delivered a nice homepage but never thought about the service pages that customers could actually find through Google.
Start with the business, not the designer
Before you compare providers, write down what the website is supposed to do. Do you need enquiries? Online sales? Bookings? Applications? A company profile? A property catalogue? A place for customers to read your services and then move to WhatsApp?
This gives you something concrete to discuss. It also makes it harder for somebody to sell you features you do not need.
Ask to see real work
A portfolio should not just contain ten polished screenshots. Open the websites.
Check them on your phone. Try the menus. Look at the contact process. Read the copy. Search for the business on Google. If the provider talks about SEO, ask which parts they actually handled.
There is nothing wrong with a new studio having a small portfolio. What matters is being honest about which work is theirs, which work was done for a client and what their role was.
Find out who owns everything
This is one of the least exciting questions and one of the most important.
Your domain should belong to your business. You should know where the hosting account lives. You should have administrator access to WordPress. You should know how business email is configured. If the website uses a paid theme, plugin or external platform, you should know whose account owns the licence.
Do not accept “We will keep everything for you” as an answer without understanding the arrangement.
Ask what is included in the quote
A proper proposal should explain the scope. Page count is helpful, but not enough.
Ask about copywriting. Images. Forms. WhatsApp. Payment integration. Analytics. Search Console. SEO setup. Redirects. Security. Backups. Mobile testing. Revisions. Launch support.
You do not need every item on every project. You need to know which ones are included and which ones are not.
Do not let “SEO included” end the conversation
SEO can mean anything from adding a plugin to doing keyword research, creating a useful site structure, writing service pages, fixing technical problems and working on local visibility.
Ask what the provider actually means.
A useful website has clear pages for the services people search for. It should also make the business easy to understand. Those two things are connected.
Look at the handover
Imagine the designer disappears tomorrow. Could you still log in? Could you change a phone number? Could somebody else maintain the site? Can you export the content?
A professional provider should not make your business dependent on one person’s laptop.
Be careful with guarantees
“Page one in seven days” sounds attractive because it is simple. It is also not how search works.
A good provider can improve technical quality, page relevance, local signals and the site’s ability to be understood. Nobody outside a search engine controls every ranking outcome.
Ask about support after launch
The first month after launch is when small things become obvious. A form needs a tweak. A service has changed. Somebody notices a mobile spacing issue. A plugin update behaves badly.
Ask what happens then.
A simple test before you decide
Send the same brief to two or three providers and compare the questions they ask you. Good web work starts with curiosity.
Did they ask who your customers are? Did they ask what you sell? Did they ask where customers currently come from? Did they ask what success looks like?
Or did they simply reply with a price?
The cheapest proposal can be the right one for a very simple job. A more expensive one can also be poor. The useful comparison is the clarity of the work, the ownership arrangement, the quality of the thinking and the support behind the build.
At Tycoon Concept, our starting point is the same question we use on every project: what does the website need to help the business do next?