# How to Choose a Web Design Agency: What to Check First What to check before you hire a web design agency, each a test you can run in minutes: their own site, their work, their answers, and what you own. By Mike Murphy, Owner and Founder of Rivet Bay. Published September 23, 2026. 9 min read. Canonical: https://rivetbay.com/articles/how-to-choose-a-web-design-agency --- ![A flat illustration of one fishing boat lit by a lighthouse beam in the foreground, with two small unlit boats far off on the horizon.](https://rivetbay.com/articles/how-to-choose-a-web-design-agency/header.webp) **TL;DR.** Choose a web design agency by checking rather than trusting. Run their own site and two of their portfolio sites through PageSpeed Insights, read the source for a theme, open them on a phone, and look for named people and clients with live links. Then ask who owns the domain, the code, and the hosting when the project ends. Every check takes minutes, and together they separate a partner from a template shop before you sign. [Our free hiring guide](https://rivetbay.com/resources/hiring-a-web-designer) carries the 24 questions. ## What should you settle before you talk to anyone? Settle what the site has to do, who will write it, and who will look after it, because an agency can only be judged against a job. Most bad hires start with a vague brief, not a bad agency. Write one sentence that says what the site is for: more project inquiries, fewer support calls, bookings without a phone call. Decide who writes the copy, since the words are the slowest part of any build and the part most agencies quietly leave to you. Decide who updates the site after launch, and whether that person exists. Then decide what "custom" means to you. If a good theme with your logo would do the job, say so, and hire for that. It is cheaper, faster, and honest. ## What should you check on the agency's own website? The agency's own website is its first portfolio piece, and you can check it in ten minutes without asking anyone. They will not do it for you if they will not do it for themselves. **Figure 1.** A site checked in ten minutes: the four things to look at on an agency's own site and on the sites it built, labeled where they sit. A site checked in ten minutes, drawn as a sheet with a phone beside it. Run the address through PageSpeed Insights and read the mobile score. View the page source and search for a theme; the copy should be in the HTML. Open it on your own phone and use the menu and the form. Look for named people, a visible date, and clients with live links. 1. **Run it through PageSpeed Insights.** Paste the address into [Google's PageSpeed Insights](https://pagespeed.web.dev/) and read the mobile score. Google's own thresholds for a good page are a largest paint within 2.5 seconds, an interaction delay of 200 milliseconds or less, and a layout shift of 0.1 or less ([web.dev, Core Web Vitals](https://web.dev/articles/vitals)). An agency that sells speed should clear them on its own site. 2. **Read the source.** Right-click the page and choose "View page source", then search for `wp-content/themes`, `squarespace`, or `wixstatic`. None of those is a crime. But if the agency calls its work custom and its own site is a purchased theme, you have learned something about the word "custom". 3. **Open it on your phone.** Not the phone in their screenshots. Yours. Tap the menu, fill in the contact form, and read a page. If anything is cramped, slow, or hidden, that is the standard they accept. 4. **Look for names.** A real agency names its people, dates its writing, and links to clients you can visit. "Our team" with no faces, "testimonials" with first names only, and a portfolio of screenshots with no links are all the same signal. Check a site now: paste an address into Google's PageSpeed Insights (https://pagespeed.web.dev/) and read the mobile score. On the web page, the check runs in place. ## What should you check in their work? Check two or three of their portfolio sites with the same four tests, then check whether the work is still standing. A portfolio is a set of claims until you visit the sites. Open each site today, not the screenshot. Does it still look like the portfolio image, or has it been rebuilt by someone else since? Is the client a business you can find on Google Maps, with a phone number that rings? Does the site load as fast as the agency's own? Look for a case study that shows something you can measure and check, like a speed score you can rerun, a working form, or a page that answers a question an assistant would quote. A case study that only states "increased engagement" provides no data. Pay attention to what the agency's own site says about search. [Answer Engine Optimization](https://rivetbay.com/articles/what-is-aeo-answer-engine-optimization) and the SEO fundamentals under it are decisions made in how a site is written and coded. If an agency's site has no visible author, no questions as headings, and copy that appears only after JavaScript runs, it is not building for search, whatever the services page says. ## What questions separate a partner from a template shop? The questions that matter are about ownership, authorship, and what happens after launch, because those are where template shops and real partners give different answers. - **Who owns the domain, the code, and the hosting when we are done?** The right answer is you, all three, with the login details in your hands. An agency that keeps the domain in its own account, or hosts on a platform you cannot leave, has made you a subscriber. - **Is the design custom or a theme?** Either can be right. The wrong answer is a theme sold as custom, which the source-view test above will show you. - **Who writes the copy?** If the answer is "you send us the content", plan for it. If the answer is "we write it with you", ask to see writing they have done for someone else. - **How is search built in?** Fast pages, copy in the HTML, question-led headings, structured data, a named author. These are how the site is made, not a package on top. An agency that lists "SEO setup" as a line item tells you the base build lacks it. - **What is not included?** Photography, logo design, paid ads, and content after launch are often out of scope. A clear "no" here is a good sign. - **Who does the work, day to day?** Find out who you will speak with and who writes the code. Ask whether any of it is handed to a junior or sent offshore. Ask how many projects they handle at one time. - **What happens after launch?** Who fixes a broken form on a Tuesday, how updates are billed, and what the agency does if you want to leave. [The hiring guide](https://rivetbay.com/resources/hiring-a-web-designer) has 24 of these questions with what a good answer sounds like for each, and a four-step process for running the search. ## What are the red flags? The red flags are promises nobody can keep and answers nobody will give. Six come up often enough to list. - **A guaranteed ranking.** Google's own guidance on hiring search help says that "no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google," and tells you to be wary of anyone who claims to guarantee rankings or a special relationship with Google ([Google Search Central, Do you need an SEO?](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/do-i-need-seo)). Anyone offering one is describing someone else's product. - **A price before a scoping conversation.** A number quoted before anyone asks what the site needs to do is a template price. It may be the right product, but it is not custom work. - **No named people.** If the site cannot tell you who will build yours, nobody is accountable for it. - **A portfolio without live links.** Screenshots may show a design that never launched, or a site someone else rebuilt. - **Hosting you cannot leave.** Some page builders and some agencies keep the site on a platform where "export" means a folder of images. Find out how to leave before you sign up. - **SEO sold as an add-on made of fundamentals.** A fast, crawlable, well-written site is the base product. When the base build needs an "SEO package" to be found, the base build is incomplete. ## How much should a custom website cost? A custom website costs what its scope costs, and any agency that gives you a number before a scoping conversation has skipped the scope. Four things drive the figure. The number of distinct pages and templates. Who writes the copy and produces the photography. Integrations, such as booking, payments, or a customer portal. And who maintains the site afterward, since a site nobody updates is a site that decays. We quote every project as a flat rate after a scoping call, with ongoing work priced separately, and we are neither the cheapest option nor the most expensive. [Our guide to what a custom website costs](https://rivetbay.com/resources/what-a-website-costs) explains each driver and cites published ranges from outside sources, so you can judge any quote against them. If you weigh custom work against a good template, [custom vs. template](https://rivetbay.com/resources/custom-vs-template) fairly compares them. ## Does the agency need to be in Massachusetts? An agency needs to be near you only when you need someone in the room; the design, the development, and the search work are done remotely, wherever the agency sits. Location matters in two cases. You want in-person workshops, or you run a business that serves one town and want an agency that knows local search well. Otherwise, judge the work and the answers. A search for the best web design agencies in Massachusetts returns ranked lists, and every one of them is an advertisement: the agencies on it paid to be listed, or wrote the list. The checks in this article are the same in Boston, Weymouth, or Denver, and they are the only ranking that counts. For the record, Rivet Bay works with businesses across the United States from Weymouth, Massachusetts, on Boston's South Shore. Most of our work is remote, and we are glad to meet in person when you are nearby. ## How does Rivet Bay answer its own checklist? Here is how we answer the checks above, each one something you can verify rather than take on trust, and then the cases where we are the wrong choice. - **Our own site.** rivetbay.com scores 96 for performance and 100 for accessibility, best practices, and SEO on Google's PageSpeed Insights, with a largest paint of 2.0 seconds, as the median of five mobile runs on September 15, 2026. Rerun it today. We generate each page as static HTML, with the text in the source; headings are questions, and articles list an author and date. - **Our work.** Every site we build is custom code, with no templates and no page-builder dependencies. [Homemakers Interior Design](https://homemakersinteriordesign.com) scores 100 on Lighthouse performance on desktop and 96 on mobile, which the check above will confirm; [Raincoat Claims Consulting](https://raincoatcc.com) carries our credit in its footer. Both are real clients you can call, and [the work page](https://rivetbay.com/work) links to them. - **Ownership.** You own the site, the code, and the domain. We offer managed hosting, and recommend it, and you still own everything if you leave. - **Who does the work.** The founder directs each project, drawing on over 15 years of website building experience. No junior handoffs, no offshore delegation, and three active projects at a time by design. - **Price and time.** We offer a flat rate after a scoping call. A custom marketing site usually takes four to six weeks, while larger projects take eight to twelve. - **Search.** Fast pages, copy in the HTML, question-led headings, one structured-data graph, and a named author are part of the build, not a package. And where we are the wrong choice. We do not build on WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, or Shopify, and we do not do template work, so if a theme with your logo is the right product, we will say so and you should hire for that. We do not manage paid advertising, produce photography or video, or design logos. If you need a site in a week, we are not the right shop. And if anyone, including us, promises you a ranking, walk away. If our answers hold up against your checklist, [look at the work](https://rivetbay.com/work) first, then [start a project with us](https://rivetbay.com/contact) and bring the sentence that says what your site is for. ## Frequently asked questions ### How do I choose a web design agency? Check before you trust. Run the agency's own site and two of its portfolio sites through Google's PageSpeed Insights, view the page source for a theme, open them on a phone, and look for named people and real clients with live links. Then ask who owns the domain, the code, and the hosting when the project ends. An agency that passes those checks and answers those questions plainly is a safe choice. ### What questions should I ask a web design agency? Ask who owns the site, the code, and the domain after launch; whether the design is custom or a theme; who writes the copy; how search and AI answer engines are built into the site rather than sold as an add-on; what is not included; who does the work day to day; and what happens after launch. Our free hiring guide lists 24 questions and shows what a good answer sounds like. ### How much do web design agencies charge? It depends on scope, on who writes the copy, on integrations such as booking or payments, and on who maintains the site afterward. Any agency that quotes a price before a scoping conversation is quoting a template. We quote every project as a flat rate after a scoping call, and our cost guide explains what drives the number with published ranges from outside sources. ### Should I hire a local web design agency? Only if you need someone in the room. Design and development are done remotely, and a good agency works with clients across the country. Location is important if you want in-person workshops or local search expertise for a business that serves one town. Judge the agency by its work and its answers, not by its zip code. ### What are the red flags when hiring a web designer? A guaranteed ranking, which Google itself says no one can promise. A price before anyone has asked what the site needs to do. The agency's site lists no named people. A portfolio without links to live sites. Hosting you cannot leave. And an SEO package sold as an extra when it is made of fundamentals every site should have. ### Is a freelancer or an agency better for a small business? Neither by default. A freelancer can be excellent and an agency can be a template shop. The checks are the same: their own site, their work, their answers about ownership, and who will do the work. The one difference to weigh is continuity, so ask what happens if the person you hire is unavailable for a month. --- Written by Mike Murphy, Owner and Founder of Rivet Bay. Every claim about the business in this article comes from what Rivet Bay can verify; outside statistics link to their source. Source: https://rivetbay.com/articles/how-to-choose-a-web-design-agency. Published by Rivet Bay, https://rivetbay.com/.