How to choose a web design agency

You have a website to replace, a budget someone has approved, and a shortlist that came from a search, a colleague and a directory. Every agency on it has a good-looking portfolio and a process diagram, and none of them will tell you that it is the wrong firm for your job. The cost of a bad choice arrives late. A website project runs for months, and the mismatch usually shows at launch, or a year later, when nobody on your team can change a page or the domain turns out to belong to someone else.

This page sets out how to choose: deciding what you are buying, testing an agency's live work rather than its case studies, finding out who will build it, and the terms to settle before you sign. It does not name a winner. Our rankings do that, and prices have a guide of their own.

Decide what you are buying before you shortlist

Most website projects that go wrong are failures of fit rather than talent. A studio that designs beautiful brand sites is asked to build a sales tool wired into a CRM, or an engineering shop is asked to make a company look like a category leader. Both firms can be good and still be the wrong firm.

So settle three things in writing before you open a portfolio.

What kind of job it is. A set of designed pages against a settled brand, a site that needs its message worked out first, a brand that has to be resolved before any page is designed, or a team you rent by the quarter. What a web design agency costs explains how each is scoped. If you are not sure the problem is the website at all, branding or web design has a test for it.

Whether the platform is already decided. If it is Webflow, hire a Webflow specialist, and web design or Webflow sets out when that is true. If the site has to do heavy work behind the pages, web design or web development covers who to hire for it.

Who will run the site after launch. A marketing team that edits pages every week needs a different build from a site your engineers maintain or one the agency keeps on a retainer.

Those answers decide which shortlist to start from: B2B, SaaS, healthcare, firms in the US, or the global field.

Test their live sites, not their case studies

A case study is photographed on launch day and written by the agency. The live site is what the client has been living with since. Pick three sites from the portfolio that are closest to your job and at least a year old, then open them.

• Is it still there, and still theirs? If the design has been replaced within two years, ask what happened. A launch announcement on the client's own newsroom that names the agency is stronger evidence than the agency's own page, because the client chose to say it.
• How fast is it? Run each site through Google's free PageSpeed Insights. Google's Core Web Vitals set the thresholds for a good experience: the main content loads within 2.5 seconds, the page responds to input within 200 milliseconds, and the layout shift score stays under 0.1. A site the agency built that fails all three, a year after launch, tells you more than any slide about performance.
• Can you use it without a mouse? Press Tab from the top of the page. If you cannot see where you are, or the menu cannot be opened from the keyboard, the site will fail basic accessibility testing, and so may yours.
• Who did what? Large sites often carry several vendors: one firm designs, another builds, a third runs the content system. Ask the agency which part was its own.

Awards are worth one check of their own. Look the win up in the organiser's own archive, and separate a win from a nomination. A badge from a directory or review site usually records that a profile exists, not that anyone judged the work.

Find out who will build it

Some web design agencies design and then hand the build to a partner. That can work, but you own the gap between the two firms, and that gap is where budget and timeline go. Ask who writes the code, and whether that team works for the agency.

Then ask who, by name, will be on your project day to day and what share of their time it gets. The people who present the pitch are not always the people who do the work. Neither shape is wrong, but write the names into the contract with a clause on what happens if they leave.

Keep the selection small. Three firms, chosen on the job, the live work and the team, is enough. Meet each to talk about your problem rather than asking for free design concepts: mock-ups drawn before anyone has studied your customers are a guess, and choosing between guesses tells you little about how a firm thinks.

Put accessibility in the contract, not the proposal

Every agency will say it builds accessible sites. The question is which standard, at which level, and how it is tested. The current standard is the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2, and level AA is the target most rules point to. In the US, the Department of Justice's rule for state and local governments sets WCAG 2.1 level AA, with compliance now due from April 2027 for larger public bodies. For businesses, the Department has no regulation setting detailed standards, but says the ADA still applies to their websites. In the EU, the European Accessibility Act covers services including e-commerce.

Whether or not a rule binds you, name the standard and level in the contract, and ask the agency how it tests: with a screen reader and a keyboard, not only with an automated scanner, which cannot judge whether a page actually makes sense to someone using one.

If you already have a site, protect what it earns

A redesign of a site that already brings in search traffic is also a site move, even if the domain stays the same, because page addresses usually change. Google's guidance on site moves is to map every old address to its new one and use permanent, server-side redirects. Agree before the project starts who builds that map, who checks it after launch, and that it is in scope rather than a change request.

Five things to own before you sign

These are cheap to settle on day one and expensive to argue about at the end.

1. The domain. Register it in your company's name and your own registrar account, not the agency's. ICANN says the registrant of record holds the rights to a domain, and warns that a developer may have registered it under their own details even when you paid for it.
2. The hosting, platform and analytics accounts. Hold them yourself and add the agency as a user. In Google Analytics, for example, only an Administrator can add or change users, so the Administrator should be someone on your payroll.
3. The work itself. Under US law a commissioned website design is not automatically yours: commissioned work only counts as a work made for hire in nine categories set out in the law, and a transfer of copyright is only valid in writing, signed by the owner. Make sure the contract assigns the design and the code to you, and lists any fonts, stock images or plugins with who holds the licence.
4. What is handed over. Design files, the code repository if there is one, and documentation for whoever edits the site next. List them by name.
5. Who signs off on your side. One named person with final approval. Every phase waits on them, and an unclear answer is the easiest way for a launch date to slip.