What questions to ask a web designer before you hire them.

TL;DR: Before you hire a web designer, ask questions in five areas: proof (can I see live sites you built), scope (exactly what do I get, and what costs extra), ownership (do I own the domain, hosting, and files), process (how long, how many revisions, what happens after launch), and results (is it built for mobile, speed, and search). The answers tell you more than any portfolio. A good designer answers all of them plainly. Hesitation on ownership or scope is your warning sign.

Hiring a web designer feels hard because you're judging work you don't fully understand. You don't need to become technical. You need the right questions, because the answers reveal whether someone is accountable long before any money changes hands.

What questions should I ask a web designer before hiring them?

Ask about five things: their proof, the scope, who owns what, the process, and the results. Those five areas cover every way a project usually goes wrong. Work through them in order, and take notes on where the answers get vague.

The point isn't to catch anyone out. It's that clear, specific answers are themselves the signal. A designer who has done this well before can answer all of these without discomfort.

What should I ask about their past work?

Ask to see live websites they personally built, and to speak to one or two past clients. Screenshots and a slick pitch are easy to fake. A working link and a real reference are not.

Ask: "Can you send me three live sites you built, that I can open right now?" and "Can I talk to a client from the last year?" A confident designer says yes quickly. Vague answers, only screenshots, or "I can't share client details" for everything are a sign the proof isn't there.

What should I ask about scope and price?

Ask exactly what you get for the price, and what is not included. Most disputes and surprise invoices come from a fuzzy scope, so pin it down before you agree.

Ask: "Exactly which pages and features are in this price?", "What would cost extra later?", and "How many rounds of revisions are included before changes cost more?" Get the answers in writing. This matters because added requests after work starts are a leading cause of blown budgets and timelines. Across all project types, 52% experienced scope creep (PMI, 2018). A clear written scope is how you avoid being on the wrong side of that number.

What should I ask about ownership?

Ask, in plain words, "Will I own my domain, my hosting account, and all the files, in my name?" This is the most important question on the list, and the one people forget.

If the designer registers your domain and hosting under their own account, they control your website, and a dispute can lock you out of your own business. The right answer is that everything is registered in your name, on accounts you control, and you get all files and logins at the end. Anything less means you're renting your website, not owning it. Get this one in writing.

What should I ask about timeline and process?

Ask how long it will take, what the stages are, and what happens if it runs late. A real process has stages you can see, not just a launch date.

Ask: "What's the timeline, with milestones?", "What do you need from me, and by when?", and "What happens if it slips?" A standard small business website takes about 4 to 8 weeks, so an answer far outside that, in either direction, is worth questioning. Watch for anyone who can't give you any structure, because a project with no visible stages is a project that quietly stalls.

What should I ask about after launch?

Ask what happens once the site is live: who hosts it, who fixes things, who updates it, and what each costs. The build is not the end, and a cheap build price often hides expensive surprises later.

Ask: "After launch, what do hosting, updates, security, and support cost?", and "If I need a small change in six months, how does that work?" You want clear, ongoing numbers, not a low headline price that turns every future change into a new invoice.

What should I ask about results?

Ask whether the site is built for phones, speed, and search, because a site that fails these fails regardless of how it looks. These are not extras. They decide whether the site actually brings you customers.

Ask: "Is it built mobile-first and tested on a real phone?", "How fast will it load?", and "Is basic SEO included, and what exactly does that mean here?" Speed matters more than most owners realize: 53% of mobile visitors leave a page that takes more than 3 seconds to load (Google, 2017). If the answer to any of these is a shrug, the site will look fine and still lose you customers.

Which answers are red flags?

The warning signs are refusal to share live work, no written scope, keeping your domain or hosting, and guaranteed Google rankings. Any one of these should make you slow down before signing.

A good designer welcomes these questions, because answering them well is how they win serious clients. Someone who gets defensive, stays vague on ownership, or promises guaranteed page-one results has answered the most important question of all: whether to hire them.