The questions that separate an agency you will be glad you hired from one you will spend a year escaping — what to ask, what a good answer sounds like, and which answers should end the conversation.
Choosing an agency is mostly a risk-management exercise. The work itself is rarely the problem; the problems are ownership, communication and what happens after launch. These are the twelve questions we would ask if we were hiring someone else, along with what a good answer actually sounds like. Several of them are uncomfortable for an agency to answer honestly, which is precisely why they are useful.
1. Who will own the code, the domain and the hosting?
The only acceptable answer is: you do, completely, from the start, in accounts registered to you. Be direct about it. If the domain is registered in the agency's name, if the hosting account is theirs, or if the code lives somewhere you have no access to, you are not a client — you are a hostage, and you will discover it at the worst possible moment. Ask to be made owner of every account on day one, not at handover.
2. What exactly is in the price, in writing?
A good proposal lists the number of unique page designs, who writes the content, how many revision rounds are included, what testing happens and on which devices, and what the post-launch warranty covers. A bad proposal is a single figure and a sentence. You are not being difficult by asking for the itemised version; you are making it possible to compare two quotes at all.
3. What happens when the scope changes?
It will change — that is normal. What matters is the mechanism. The answer you want is that changes are quoted in writing before any work starts, so you decide with the number in front of you. The answer that should worry you is a vague reassurance that they will 'sort it out at the end', because that is how a fixed project becomes an open-ended invoice.
4. Who actually does the work?
Ask who will write the code and who will design the pages, and whether any of it is subcontracted. There is nothing wrong with subcontracting if it is disclosed — there is a great deal wrong with discovering it when a bug cannot be fixed because the person who wrote the code was never employed by the people you hired.
5. How will I know how it is going?
You want a named contact, a stated update rhythm, and somewhere you can see progress without asking. Weekly written updates are a reasonable standard, including the weeks where the news is that something slipped. Silence is the most reliable early warning sign in this industry, and it is almost always the first symptom rather than the first problem.
6. What does the site do about speed and Core Web Vitals?
A competent answer mentions measuring on mobile, image handling, and what they will and will not load on the page. A vague 'it will be fast' means nobody has thought about it. Ask for the numbers of a site they built recently, tested on a phone rather than a desktop — the gap between those two is where most agencies quietly fail. If you want to understand what they should be describing, our technical SEO guide covers the same ground from the other side.
7. Is the site built so it can be found?
Even if you are not buying SEO, the build decides whether SEO is possible later. Ask whether content is server-rendered, whether page titles and descriptions are editable, whether the URL structure is sensible, and whether structured data is included. Retrofitting these onto a finished site costs far more than specifying them at the start. If search visibility matters to you commercially, it is worth discussing the SEO work at the same time as the build rather than afterwards.
8. Can I update it myself, and how hard is it really?
Ask for a live demonstration of editing a page, adding a product and changing a price — not a description of it. Many sites marketed as editable turn out to be editable only by someone who knows which of forty fields not to touch. Watch how long it takes. If the demonstration makes you nervous, the reality will be worse.
9. What happens after launch?
Get specifics: how long the defect warranty lasts, what counts as a defect versus a change, what a support request costs after that, and how quickly they respond. Then ask what maintenance they recommend and what it covers, because a site without updates and backups is a security incident waiting for a date. This is the question people most often skip and most often regret.
10. Can I speak to a client whose project went badly?
Everyone has a reference list of successes. The genuinely revealing question is whether they will tell you about a project that went wrong and what they did about it. An agency that answers that honestly is showing you how they behave under pressure, which is the only thing you actually need to know. An agency that claims nothing has ever gone wrong has either not worked much or is not being straight with you.
11. What do you need from me, and what happens if I am late?
Most delays are caused by the client, usually on content, and a good agency says so politely up front with a list and dates. If nobody tells you what you owe them and when, the project will stall in week three and the blame conversation will be unpleasant. A clear dependency list is a sign of experience.
12. What would you talk me out of?
This is the best question on the list. An agency with judgement will name something in your brief that is not worth building, or tell you a cheaper option would serve you. An agency that enthusiastically agrees with everything is selling, not advising, and you will pay for the difference later — usually in features nobody uses.
The answers that should end the conversation
Three in particular. A guaranteed ranking position, because nobody controls search results. Reluctance to put ownership of code, domain and hosting in your name. And a refusal to itemise the quote. Any one of those is sufficient reason to keep looking, regardless of how good the portfolio is.
You are not buying pixels; you are buying a working relationship with whoever will be responsible when something breaks at an inconvenient time. Ask the twelve questions, write the answers down, and compare them side by side rather than comparing totals. If you would like to put them to us, we will answer all twelve in writing before you commit to anything — send us your brief and you will get an itemised fixed quote, with a dated plan, within one business day. Our web development and website maintenance pages set out in advance what we include, so there is less to ask in the first place.
Code Craft
Client Services at Code Craft — the team behind our published work and products and the 39-plugin product suite.