A web design agency should do more than make pages look good. It should help your site win work and be easy to run afterwards. The seven checks below help you compare agencies on substance rather than presentation.

Look at the thinking behind the work

Attractive screenshots do not show whether a site achieved its goals. Ask how the team approaches research, content structure and conversion. A good agency will talk about your customers, your sales process and what you want visitors to do, before it talks about colours and fonts. Ask them to walk you through a past project: the problem, the decisions and what changed afterwards. Look through their portfolio for range as well as polish.

Check the team and who you will work with

Find out who will actually design, build and manage your project. Some agencies pitch with senior people and hand work to juniors or outsource it. That is not always a problem, but you should know and be comfortable with it. Ask who your day-to-day contact is and how quickly they usually reply.

Check what is included

Two quotes can look similar and cover very different things. Clarify who writes copy, how many templates are in scope, how many rounds of feedback are included, what testing is done and how content moves from your old site. Ask how the agency handles redirects and search visibility, because a new design can lose traffic if this is skipped. Our redesign checklist shows what good looks like.

Ask about quality standards

A professional build should be fast, accessible and well structured. Ask how the team tests performance against Google's Core Web Vitals, and whether they work to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. You can try PageSpeed Insights on their previous sites yourself in a minute. Weak answers here usually predict weak results.

Plan for life after launch

Find out who hosts the site, who handles updates and how your team will edit it. You should own your domain, your content and your analytics accounts, and your contract should say so. Ask what platform will be used and why it suits you. A visual platform such as Framer can let your team edit text and images without a developer, which keeps day-to-day costs down. Ask what support looks like after launch, and what happens if you want to leave.

Understand timing and cost

Costs and timelines vary widely with scope, so be wary of anyone who quotes without asking questions. A realistic schedule depends on your content and approvals as much as design, as we explain in how long a website redesign takes. Ask for a payment schedule tied to milestones and a clear list of anything that would be charged extra.

Questions to ask

• Can we see similar projects, and speak to a past client?

• Who will work on the project, and who is our main contact?

• What is excluded from the quote?

• Who owns the site, content and accounts when we finish?

• How does support work after launch?

Pay attention to how the agency answers. Clear, direct replies, including honest "it depends" answers with reasons, are a good sign. Vague promises and pressure to sign quickly are not.