When choosing a web design agency, ask for a working user journey, a content editing demonstration and written handover terms alongside the portfolio. Establish what the agency actually contributed, who will own the accounts and how support works after launch. Give candidates the same requirements so their proposals can be compared meaningfully.
Ask what the agency actually delivered
Establish which parts of an example were handled by the agency: strategy, design, content, development or maintenance. Contributing one part of a larger project is different from delivering the whole engagement. Clear attribution helps you compare the example with your own requirements.
Where confidentiality limits detail, discuss anonymised deliverables or the process. Ask how a decision was reached: how a complicated catalogue was organised, a content gap was resolved or feedback was handled. The explanation can reveal more about practical capability than a polished result image alone.
Review a completed task rather than an isolated screen
Choose a real visitor task in the demo: find a service scope and send an enquiry, or select a product and reach checkout. Try the mobile menu, keyboard navigation and error states. Watching a prepared homepage video will not reveal missing detail pages or a broken form.
Ask the team to edit a heading and preview it as a draft. Demonstrate adding a service or product, replacing an image and preserving an existing URL. Establish which tasks your staff can perform and which require development. Identify licences, vendor dependencies and continuing costs separately in the proposal.
| Review area | Evidence to request | Decision it supports |
|---|---|---|
| Design approach | Rationale with real content | Brand fit |
| User journey | A task from start to completion | Usability |
| Content management | An actual editing action | Daily operation |
| Integration | Data and error behaviour explained | Technical scope |
| Delivery | Approvals, owners and checks | Project capability |
Understand how the disciplines work together
Ask how design, development, content and project management coordinate. Include the inputs and approvals expected from your team. APM's planning framework considers activity and resource dependencies; clarify who will track those dependencies in the website engagement.
Imagine an approved design that needs extensive changes once real product copy arrives. If content and layout were never reviewed together, the handover can produce avoidable rework. This hypothetical example concerns the sequence connecting specialists, not merely the quality of an individual contributor.
Discuss life after launch before choosing
List domain registration, hosting, source code, design files, content and third-party licences separately in the handover terms. Identify the owner, access method and transfer conditions for each. Company-owned accounts with the agency granted appropriate access can make a later handover easier.
Separate security updates, backups, monitoring, bug fixes and new features in the maintenance proposal. Read response conditions and exclusions. Ask for specific SEO deliverables such as URL migration planning, metadata, crawlability checks or reporting, rather than treating a promise of first place as an acceptance test.