Your website is often the single biggest marketing investment a small business makes — and choosing who builds it is a decision you live with for years. A good agency becomes a long-term partner; the wrong one leaves you with a slow, locked-down site you can’t change. These twelve questions cut through the sales gloss quickly.
The short answer: choose an agency that can prove its sites are fast (ask for a Google PageSpeed score), builds mobile-first, lets you own your domain and website outright, will put you in front of a real client, and is clear about what happens after launch and if you stop paying. Honest answers to those five points rule out most bad agencies before price even comes up.
About the work itself
- 1. Will the site be fast? Ask for real numbers — a Google PageSpeed or Lighthouse score. Speed affects both rankings and conversions, so a vague “yes, it’ll be quick” isn’t good enough.
- 2. Is it built mobile-first? Most of your visitors are on phones, and Google indexes the mobile version first. The answer should be an unhesitating yes.
- 3. Will I be able to edit it myself? You shouldn’t have to pay for every comma change. Find out what you can update and how easy it is.
- 4. Do you build for SEO from the start? Good structure, headings and metadata should be baked in, not bolted on as an upsell later.
About ownership and lock-in
- 5. Who owns the site and the domain? The answer must be you. Walk away from anyone who keeps your domain or hosting hostage.
- 6. Can I move the site elsewhere later? A site built on proprietary, locked platforms can trap you. Standard, portable technology keeps you free.
- 7. What happens if I stop paying? With some “£0 upfront” deals your site vanishes the moment you stop. Know the terms before you sign, not after.
About the relationship
- 8. Can I see real work and speak to a client? Portfolios are curated; a quick word with an actual customer tells you far more.
- 9. Who actually does the work? Is it the person in the meeting, an in-house team, or an offshore subcontractor you’ll never reach?
- 10. What’s included after launch? Updates, backups, security and support all matter. A site is a living thing, not a one-off delivery.
- 11. How do you charge — and for what? Look for clarity. Hidden “maintenance” fees and surprise change-charges are red flags.
- 12. Can you do more than design? If your business might one day need a booking system, a customer portal or custom software, an agency that can actually build — not just style a template — saves you switching later.
What should a web design agency cost in the UK?
As a rough 2026 guide: a simple brochure website from a freelancer typically runs £500–£2,000; a professionally engineered small-business site from an agency usually lands between £2,000 and £10,000; e-commerce and custom functionality go beyond that. Be suspicious at both extremes — £199 template deals usually mean lock-in (see question 7), and a big quote doesn’t guarantee good engineering. Whatever the number, insist on an itemised quote and ask what ongoing costs (hosting, maintenance, changes) look like from year two onwards.
What the answers tell you
You’re listening for two things: honesty (do they give straight answers or sales fog?) and capability (can they do the hard parts, or only the pretty ones?). The agencies worth hiring are comfortable being pinned down on speed, ownership and what happens when things go wrong.
For what it’s worth, those twelve questions are exactly how we’d want to be judged. We’re Web Level Up, a web design and software agency in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and we publish our answers openly: our own site scores 97–100 in Google PageSpeed, our SEO packages start at £99 a month, and we document our own results in a live case study. We build fast, mobile-first, standards-based sites you own outright — and because we also build custom software, we can grow with you rather than handing you off. Here’s how we approach web design in Cheltenham, the full range of what we do, and how we handle hosting without locking you in.