How to choose a web designer for your small business
Choosing a web designer is partly a chemistry conversation and partly a procurement exercise. The chemistry part matters: you will share decisions and deadlines with this person or team. The procurement part stops you paying for the wrong stack, the wrong scope, or a pretty home page that your customers never find. If you are comparing options after searching how to choose a web designer for your small business, walk through these steps in order.
Evidence beyond screenshots
Ask for two live sites in industries adjacent to yours, then open them on your phone on a slow connection. Tap the enquiry path yourself. Note load behaviour, form friction and clarity of service wording. Ask what that client asked for versus what shipped. Studios that cannot explain trade offs may be hiding template limits or outsourced delivery.
Who writes the words
Copy is not filler. If the proposal assumes you supply every line of finished text on day one, check you have capacity. If the proposal includes copywriting, ask how they interview you and how many revision rounds exist. Weak copy makes even strong design underperform in search and conversion.
Search and measurement
Ask how they handle redirects from an old site, basic on page metadata, XML sitemaps, analytics events and Search Console verification. You do not need every SEO product on day one, but you do need a clean technical base. If those items are optional extras with no prices, get them quoted explicitly.
Ownership and handover
Confirm who owns domain, hosting account and repository access. Ask for training on how to edit text and add blog posts if you need that. Ask what happens after launch if something breaks. Response time expectations in writing beat verbal reassurance.
Price shape
Fixed price with defined rounds of revision suits many small projects. Hourly or day rate suits discovery heavy or evolving scopes. Either can work. Red flags are unlimited revisions with a low fixed price, or a large deposit before you have seen a written scope.
Fit with Makeproper
We publish who we are for on our About page. If your brief matches that, send it through the contact page. If not, we will still try to point you in a sensible direction, because a bad hire wastes everyone's time.
