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Oct 10, 2026

How to choose a website designer: what to check before you pay

A good website designer saves you months. A bad one can cost you your domain. What to check, what to ask, and what Google, the Copyright Office and the ADA guidance actually say, with sources.

I have worked as a website designer in Phoenix since 2009, and a lot of the people who call me are on their second designer. The first one went quiet, or the site broke and nobody could fix it, or they found out the domain was never in their name. Almost none of that was bad luck. It was checkable before anyone signed anything.

This is the list I would give a friend. Where a claim depends on a law or on how Google works, I have linked the primary source, so you do not have to take my word for it.

Website designer, web developer or agency: who do you need?

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics splits the work in two. Web developers "create and maintain websites": the code, the server, the parts that make it work. Digital designers handle the layout, navigation and usability: the parts that decide whether a visitor understands it.

For a small business site you usually want one person or team doing both, because the gap between "looks right" and "works right" is where most problems live. What matters is that you know who is actually building it. Plenty of designers sell the job and pass the build to someone else, which is fine if they tell you and a problem if they do not.

Roughly, your options look like this:

  • Build it yourself on Squarespace or Wix. Cheapest, and the right call if you have not proven anyone will buy yet.
  • A freelance website designer. One person, direct contact, lower overhead. Ask what happens if they are sick or busy.
  • An agency. More people and more process. You pay for both, and your project may be handled by someone you never met.

For context on price: the BLS puts the median pay for web and digital interface designers at $104,000 a year, and for web developers at $92,650 (May 2025). A quote far below what that skill costs is usually a template, a side job, or a build that ends at launch. None of those are automatically wrong. You just want to know which one you are buying.

1. Make sure the domain is in your name

This is the one that hurts most, so it goes first. Whoever is listed as the registrant of a domain controls it. ICANN, the body that oversees domain names, says the registrant takes "sole responsibility for the registration and use" of the name. If your designer registered your domain in their own account, it is theirs to renew, move or hold on to.

What to do: register the domain yourself, at a registrar you choose, and give your designer access to it rather than the other way round. If a designer already registered it, ask for it to be moved into an account in your name before the project is paid off, not after.

2. Get the copyright in writing

Most people assume that paying for a website means owning it. Under U.S. copyright law, that is not automatic. The U.S. Copyright Office explains that the author of a work is ordinarily the person who created it. A commissioned work only counts as a "work made for hire", owned by the person who paid for it, when it falls into one of nine specific categories and both sides sign a written agreement saying so.

A website does not fit neatly into those categories, which is why the usual fix is a written assignment of copyright in the contract, not just the phrase "work for hire". Two things to know:

  • Ask for the design files and the code to be assigned to you on final payment, in writing.
  • Some parts cannot be assigned, because the designer never owned them: a theme, fonts, stock photos. For those you get a license. A good designer will tell you which parts are which.

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. If the site is a big part of your business, a short call with one is cheap compared to finding out later.

3. Look at live sites, not screenshots

A portfolio of screenshots tells you the designer can make a nice picture. A live site tells you much more. Open three of their recent projects on your phone and check:

  • Is the site still up, and does it still look like the screenshot?
  • Does the menu work with your thumb? Can you tap the phone number to call it?
  • Do the contact forms look maintained, and is the copyright year current?

Phones matter more than they used to. Google finished moving to mobile-first indexing in October 2023, which means it mainly crawls and judges your site the way a phone sees it. A site that only works on a desktop is a site Google sees at its worst.

4. Test their sites for speed the way Google does

You do not need to take a designer's word on speed. Paste one of their live sites into PageSpeed Insights, Google's free tool, and look at the Core Web Vitals. Google publishes the thresholds for a "good" result on web.dev:

  • Largest Contentful Paint (how fast the main content shows): 2.5 seconds or less.
  • Interaction to Next Paint (how fast it responds when you tap): 200 milliseconds or less.
  • Cumulative Layout Shift (how much things jump around while loading): 0.1 or less.

Keep this in proportion. Google says Core Web Vitals are used by its ranking systems, but it also says it will show the most relevant page even when the page experience is poor. Speed will not rescue a site that says the wrong things. It mostly decides whether the person who found you waits for the page or hits back.

5. Ask how they handle accessibility

The Department of Justice says the ADA's Title III, which covers businesses open to the public, applies to what they offer online too. Its guidance on web accessibility (March 2022) lists the usual problems: poor color contrast, information given by color alone, images without alt text, videos without captions, forms people cannot fill in, and pages that only work with a mouse. It points to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as the technical standard.

You can test the basics yourself in two minutes. On one of the designer's sites, put the mouse aside and press Tab to move through the page. Can you see where you are? Can you reach the menu and fill in the contact form? If not, ask them why, and how your site will be different.

6. Walk away from ranking guarantees

Google is blunt about this in its own guide to hiring help with search: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google." The same page warns you to be wary of firms and web consultants that email you out of the blue.

The same goes for Google Maps. Google says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and popularity, and that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. A designer can build a site that helps all three. Nobody can promise you the top three spots, and anyone who does is telling you something Google says is not true.

If you want to know where you actually stand before you spend anything, here is how to check your Google Maps ranking for free.

7. Find out what happens after launch

The day a site launches is the day it starts going out of date. Before you sign, get straight answers to these:

  • Who hosts it, and what does that cost each month?
  • When I need to change a price or add a service, is that an email, a login I can use myself, or an invoice?
  • Who keeps the software and plugins up to date, and who notices when something breaks?
  • Where are the backups, and have you ever actually restored one?

A designer who has thought about this will answer quickly. One who has not will say "we can figure that out later," and later is when it costs you.

8. Get a fixed price and a written scope

Hourly billing on a website puts all the risk on you. Ask for one fixed figure, agreed before work starts, and a written list of what is included and, just as useful, what is not. "Everything is included" is not a scope. I wrote up what a website actually costs in Phoenix if you want real numbers to compare quotes against.

Questions to ask a website designer

If you only take one thing from this post, take this list into your next call:

  1. Whose name will the domain and hosting accounts be in?
  2. Will the contract assign the copyright in the design and code to me on final payment?
  3. Which parts are licensed rather than owned: theme, fonts, photos?
  4. Can I see three live sites you built in the last two years, and talk to one of those owners?
  5. Who will actually build my site?
  6. Who writes the words on the pages, and is that in the price?
  7. How will you test it on phones, for speed and for keyboard use?
  8. What is the fixed price, and what is not included?
  9. What does a change cost after launch, and how fast do you reply?
  10. What happens to my site if you stop doing this work?

Red flags

  • A guaranteed first-page or number one ranking.
  • Cold emails about your "broken" website from someone you have never heard of.
  • The domain registered in the designer's account, with no plan to move it.
  • No contract, or a contract that never mentions who owns the work.
  • A portfolio with no live links.
  • A price that only becomes clear after you have agreed to start.

How I work

Since you are reading this on my site, here is how I answer that list. I am one website designer, based in Phoenix, and I build every site myself. Websites start at $1,000, quoted as one fixed figure before any work begins. Your domain stays in your name. I write the words on the pages, because a site waiting on copy is a site that never launches. Most of the sites in my portfolio link to the live versions, so you can run every test above on my own work.

If you are looking for a website designer near you in Phoenix, Scottsdale or anywhere in the valley, here is what a site from me includes, or tell me what you are building and I will give you a straight number.

Sources

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