What to look for when you hire a website designer

Hiring someone to build your website is easy to get wrong, because everything looks the same in the sales call. The portfolio is clean, the price sounds reasonable, and the person seems to know what they are doing. You do not find out what you actually bought until six months later, when you need one thing changed and nobody picks up the phone.

I have been on both sides of this: the contractor with a site he could not fix, and the person building them now. Here is what I check for, and what I tell people to ask before they sign anything.

The one line to remember: the site that is easy to buy and the site that is easy to live with are rarely the same site. The questions below are how you tell them apart before you have paid.

They ask about your business before they show you a design

A designer who opens with template options and color choices is designing for looks. The questions that come first are about the work: who is your customer, which jobs do you want more of, and what should someone do the moment they land on your page. If nobody asks that, you get a site that is nice to look at and does not book anything. The layout is the last decision, not the first.

The search work is in the build, not bolted on after

"We will handle SEO later" almost always means it was never in the plan. The structure that lets a search engine understand your business has to be in the page from the first version: Local SEO Schema Markup, the JSON-LD that spells out your trade, your service area, and your phone number so a search engine does not have to guess. Ask how a search engine will read your site. If they cannot answer, they are building you a brochure and calling it a website.

Green flags and red flags

Green flag	Red flag
Asks about your customers and your best jobs first	Opens with templates and color palettes
Schema and page speed are in the first build	"We can add SEO later"
Portfolio has live plumber and electrician sites	Portfolio is all retail and agency mockups
Domain and hosting registered in your name	"We take care of all that," and you never see a login
Itemized quote, published pricing	One lump number with no breakdown
A clear answer for month three	"It will not need anything"

The domain and hosting are in your name

This is the one that costs people the most when it goes wrong. Your domain should be registered in your business's name with you on the account, and you should hold the hosting login. If you ever part ways with whoever built the site, you should be able to take it and go. An arrangement where the designer handles all that and you never see a login is how a website quietly becomes something you rent from a person you no longer work with.

The price is itemized

You should be able to see what you are paying for: the build, the Local SEO setup, the domain registration, anything that recurs. A single lump number makes it impossible to tell the work from the markup, and hard to compare two quotes honestly. What we charge is published on one page, line by line, before anyone talks to us. That is the standard to hold every quote to.

Somebody is there after launch

A website is not finished the day it goes live. It needs security updates, the occasional content change, a new service line when the business grows. Ask what happens in month three. "It will not need anything" is not an answer.

You can call a reference, and they will tell you when a different tool fits

Written testimonials are easy to write. Ask for two or three contractors you can actually call, and ask them plain questions: did it launch on time, does the phone ring more, and what happened the first time you needed a change. And the honest designer will tell you when custom HTML is not the answer. If you publish several posts a week yourself or run real e-commerce, a content platform is the right call. A six-page contractor site is not those things. It is your services, your service area, your proof, and a form that works.

The short version

Asks about your business before showing designs
Builds Local SEO Schema Markup and page speed in from the start
Shows live contractor sites, not retail mockups
Puts the domain and hosting in your name
Gives you an itemized price
Has a plan for the months after launch
Hands you references you can call
Tells you when a different tool would serve you better

Hold us to our own list.

We build you a working demo, your trade, your city, your name on it, within 3 business days, before you pay anything. If it does not do what a website is supposed to do, you walk away and owe nothing.

See Your Demo

Dan

Founder, Sun City Marketing

Dan builds custom websites and marketing systems for contractors across Southern California. He writes about local SEO, HTML performance, and the practical side of scaling a trades business with automation.