Choosing a web design agency is mostly a risk decision. Pretty work is easy to find; work that loads fast, ranks, converts and stays maintainable is not. Use these questions to separate them.
1. Ask for live URLs, not screenshots
Run the live sites through PageSpeed Insights on mobile. If the agency's own portfolio pieces are slow, yours will be too. Check whether the content is in the HTML source — if the page is empty without JavaScript, crawlers and AI assistants see less than your visitors do.
2. Ask what SEO is included by default
- Unique title and meta description per page
- Canonical URLs and a real XML sitemap
- JSON-LD structured data appropriate to the page type
- Open Graph and Twitter cards for shareable previews
- A robots.txt that doesn't accidentally block anything
3. Ask who owns everything at the end
Repository, domain, hosting account, analytics, brand source files. Ownership should be yours by default, and handover should be documented rather than a favour.
4. Ask how they scope timelines
A credible answer is a range tied to scope and content readiness: a focused landing page in one to two weeks, a multi-page site in three to eight. Anyone promising a complex site in days is either cutting the strategy or the QA.
5. Ask what happens after launch
Who monitors uptime, who applies updates, who fixes a broken form at 9pm. Get it in writing, whether it's a retainer or a defined support window.
6. Match the model to the job
- Freelancer: small scope, tight budget, you manage the process
- Studio: strategy, design and engineering in one accountable team
- Large agency: multi-market campaigns with matching budgets
Red flags
- Refusing to share the code or hosting access
- Pricing with no scope attached
- No mention of performance, accessibility or analytics
- A proposal that never asks what a lead is worth to you
If you want a second opinion on a proposal you've already received, send it to hello@mstudioweb.pt — we'll tell you what's missing, even if the answer is that you should hire the other studio.