Seven Questions to Ask a Web Designer Before You Sign

You are about to sit in a meeting with someone who knows more about websites than you do. That is fine. You sit in meetings with your accountant and your equipment supplier too, and you handle those. The trick is the same here: ask a short list of plain questions and pay attention to the shape of the answer, not the vocabulary.

Here are seven questions. Bring them to any meeting, including one with us. For each, you will find what a solid answer sounds like and what a weak one is telling you.

1. When this is done, whose name is on the domain, the hosting, and the accounts?

Ask it exactly that way. You want to hear that the domain is registered to you or your corporation, with your email as the registrant contact, and that you get the login. Same for hosting, the content management system, Google Business Profile, and any analytics.

A good answer: "The domain goes in your name. We'll either register it on your behalf and transfer it, or you register it and give us access. Hosting is in your account, billed to your card, and we have a user login under it."

A bad answer sounds helpful. "Don't worry about any of that, we handle all the technical stuff for you." That is not a service, it is a hostage situation waiting to happen. If the designer owns the domain and you part ways badly, your website address — the one on your signage, your bags, and ten years of Google results — goes with them. We wrote a whole walkthrough on checking who actually owns your domain right now, and most owners who check are surprised.

Follow-up worth asking: "If I wanted to move to another provider in two years, what would you send me and how long would it take?" Anyone proud of their work answers this in one sentence.

2. The site breaks on a Saturday. What happens, and what does it cost?

Websites break. A plugin updates, a payment processor changes something, a server hiccups. The question is not whether it happens, it is what your Saturday looks like when it does.

You want specifics: who you contact, by what channel, what hours, how fast they typically respond, and what it costs. "Text this number, we look at it the same day, it's covered in your monthly plan" is a real answer. So is "email support Monday to Friday, 24-hour response, emergencies billed at an hourly rate." The second one is less convenient but it is honest, and you can plan around honest.

A bad answer is a shrug with a smile. "Oh, that basically never happens." Or no mention of hours at all. If you take online orders or bookings, a dead site on a Friday night is lost revenue, and you need to know in advance whether you are paying for coverage or taking the risk yourself.

Ask what counts as "broken" versus "a change request" too. Some shops classify everything as billable work.

3. Can I change my own prices, hours, and photos?

This is the question that separates a website you own from a website you rent one edit at a time.

You should be able to change anything that changes in real life: menu prices, service list, staff, hours, holiday notices, photos. If a designer says yes, ask for a live demonstration. Not a screenshot — have them log into a site they built and change a price while you watch. If it takes them three minutes and a lot of clicking around, it will take you twenty.

A good answer also names the line. "You edit text, prices, hours, photos, and blog posts. If you want a whole new page layout or a new booking flow, that's us." That is a sensible division.

A bad answer: "Just send us your changes and we'll do them, usually within a few business days." A few business days is fine for a new photo gallery. It is not fine when you are closing early for a staff funeral or you just raised a price. You will stop sending the changes, and within a year your site will be lying to customers.

4. What exactly is in this price, and what will be extra?

Get it itemized. Not a mood board — a list. Number of pages. Photography, or are you supplying photos. Copywriting, or are you writing the text. Online ordering or booking setup. Payment processor configuration. Hosting. SSL. Domain. Email accounts. Google Business Profile setup. Training. Post-launch revisions and how many.

Then ask the sharper version: "Name three things clients commonly ask for after launch that are not included." A designer with real experience will answer instantly, because they have had the awkward conversation many times. Someone who stalls has either never finished a project or is planning to find the extras later.

Watch for ongoing fees described as one-time and one-time fees described as ongoing. And get the monthly number separate from the build number, because those are two different decisions in your budget. For a sense of where Toronto pricing actually lands and why the spread is so wide, we broke it down in what a small business website costs in Toronto.

5. Show me something you built for a business like mine, and tell me what happened after.

Portfolios are easy to curate. Results are not.

Ask to see a live site, on their phone, for a business in roughly your category and your size. A restaurant owner looking at a portfolio of tech startup landing pages is looking at the wrong evidence. Open it on your own phone while you are sitting there. Is it fast? Can you find the hours and the phone number in under five seconds? If it takes online orders, go three steps into the flow.

Then ask what happened after launch. Did the client keep the site updated? Did they stay on? Can you call them? A designer who has built real relationships will offer a name without hesitating. One who gives you a sites-only list with no stories behind them may have built the thing and never heard from the owner again — usually because the owner could not edit it and gave up.

This matters more than design taste. A Toronto web agency that has worked with independent shops in your neighbourhood already knows what your customers look for before they walk in, and that knowledge shows up in the layout more than in the colours.

6. How long will it take, and what do you need from me to hit that date?

The second half is the important half. Most website projects do not run late because the designer is slow. They run late because the owner never sent the photos, or the menu text, or the approval on the homepage.

A good answer: "Six weeks, assuming we have your content in week one. Here's the exact list — logo files, a final menu, twelve food photos, your hours, and one hour of your time for a kickoff call." That tells you they have run this before and they know where it stalls.

A bad answer is a date with no conditions attached. "We'll have it up in a month" with no ask from you means either they are not planning carefully or they are going to fill your site with placeholder text and call it done.

Ask what happens if you are slow. Does the project pause? Does the price change? Better to know now than to discover a late fee in month three.

7. Who will actually do the work, and who will I talk to?

Sometimes the person selling you is the person building. Sometimes it is not, and that is fine, as long as you know. Ask for the name of your day-to-day contact and whether design and development are in-house or subcontracted.

The risk with subcontracting is not quality, it is latency. Every question you ask becomes a relay. If you need a price corrected before dinner service, three handoffs is three hours.

How to use this in the room

Put the seven questions on one page. Ask them in order. You do not need to understand the technology behind any answer — you need to notice whether the answer is specific, whether it includes a number or a name or a date, and whether the person gets more or less precise when you push.

Vague under pressure is the signal. Someone who has done this work for businesses like yours gets more concrete when you ask a harder question, not less.