Choosing an agency is hard when you cannot evaluate the work directly. These seven questions are the ones that actually separate people.
1. "Who owns the site when we are done?"
Good answer: you do — domain, hosting, code, analytics, all in your accounts.
Bad answer: anything involving a proprietary platform you cannot export from. That is not a website, it is a tenancy.
2. "What happens if we want to leave?"
Ask it directly and watch the reaction. A confident answer is a short one.
3. "Can I see a site you built, on mobile, right now?"
Not a screenshot — the live site, on a phone, on mobile data. Load it together. Portfolio images are rendered; real pages are downloaded.
4. "What do you measure, and what will the report show?"
Good answer: enquiries, calls, bookings — with the tracking set up to attribute them.
Bad answer: a monthly PDF of traffic and impressions. Those move for reasons that have nothing to do with your revenue.
5. "What are these results based on?"
If a case study shows "+312% traffic", ask what the starting number was. A jump from 40 visits to 160 is a 300% increase and tells you almost nothing.
Ask whether you can speak to that client. The reaction tells you more than the answer.
6. "Who actually does the work?"
Ask whether the person in the meeting is the person building it, and whether any of it is subcontracted. Subcontracting is fine — being surprised by it later is not.
7. "What would you tell us not to do?"
The most useful question on this list. An agency that has never talked a client out of anything is an agency that bills for whatever you ask for.
You are hiring judgement, not just production. If they have none to offer before you have paid, expect none afterwards.
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