How to Choose a Web Designer: Framework, CMS, and What Actually Matters

#Before you contact anyone, know three things

Designers can only quote well if you can answer a few questions. Spend a few minutes on these first and every conversation gets more useful.

What the site has to do. Get calls? Take bookings? Sell products? A site that books appointments needs different things than one that sells hundreds of products.

Who will update it after launch. If you plan to change prices, photos or blog posts yourself, say so. That decides the platform more than anything else (more on that below).

How many pages you need, roughly. List your services and the towns you serve. One page per service and per main town is a good starting estimate, and it’s the number that drives most quotes.

If you’re replacing a site that already brings in business, add a fourth: which pages get found on Google today. Search Console shows you that for free, and you’ll need it for the redesign check below.

#The scorecard

#1. Check the real speed of their live sites

A beautiful portfolio tells you they can make a mockup. It doesn’t tell you how the site works for a customer on a phone. For that, use Google’s free PageSpeed Insights. Paste in three live sites the designer built and look at the mobile results.

Know what you’re reading. Google measures real-world experience with Core Web Vitals: the main content should load within the first 2.5 seconds, the page should respond to taps in less than 200 milliseconds, and the layout shouldn’t jump around (a shift score under 0.1). PageSpeed Insights shows two kinds of data. Lab data comes from a simulated test load, and field data comes from real Chrome users. A newer or quieter site may not have enough real visitors for field data, and then PageSpeed Insights can’t show any, so you’ll often see lab results only. Google’s own note on lab scores: a green score (90+) is good, but “having good lab data does not necessarily mean real-user experiences will also be good.” Lab numbers are still useful for comparing designers, as long as you know that’s what they are.

Two of my own sites, as an example. The site I built for Wedding DJ Colorado measured 100 out of 100 for mobile performance in PageSpeed Insights, which is a lab score. MX Trophies is a WordPress store: I designed the page templates and a development partner built the site. According to Semrush data for March 2026, measured with Chrome DevTools, its Largest Contentful Paint (when the main content shows up) was 0.668 seconds and its Cumulative Layout Shift was 0.04, both passing Google’s thresholds. That’s a lab measurement from a test run, not field data from real users, and it’s the label I’d want you to put on any designer’s numbers, mine included. WordPress can get slow without someone keeping it optimized, and MX Trophies shows it doesn’t have to. How a site is built and looked after matters more for speed than which platform it runs on.

#2. Choose the platform for who will update it

Before “which platform should I use,” I’d ask “who is going to edit this site, and how often?”

For context, according to W3Techs (October 2026), WordPress is used by 40.2% of all websites. Shopify is at 5.4%, Wix at 4.2%, Squarespace at 2.4% and Webflow at 0.8%. Popularity isn’t the same as the right fit, but it does mean WordPress is easy to find help for.

Here’s how I explain the trade-offs to clients:

• WordPress fits most service businesses. It’s easy to update and has a huge plugin library. The trade-off is maintenance: it needs updates, and it can get slow without someone keeping it optimized.
• Shopify is the usual choice for an online store. The Tycoon Games and Secrets of the Tribe stores I designed both run on it.
• Custom frameworks (Next.js, React and similar) can be very fast and fully custom. The trade-off is that they’re more technical to update without help.
• Simple hand-coded pages load fastest, but they’re limited and harder to grow.

There’s no one best platform. The good sign is a designer who explains these trade-offs and lets you make an informed choice. The red flag is a designer who builds everything on one platform, no matter what the business needs. If you want to go deeper, my small business web design guide has a fuller platform comparison.

#3. Make sure the domain is in your name

This one costs nothing to get right at the start and can cost a lot to fix later. Your domain (yourbusiness.com) is registered to a person or company called the registrant. That should be you.

ICANN, the organization that coordinates domain names, is direct about it in its guide to protecting your domain name: “It is not recommended that you list website designers, hosting providers, or any other third parties as the registrant(s) of your domain name.” The same article says you should never give anyone the login information to your domain account, and it names web designers. ICANN’s checklist for registering a domain name covers the case where someone else runs it for you: if a third party will manage your domain, ask them where it’s registered (your registrar) and for the account credentials, so you have access if needed.

So keep the domain in an account in your name, and keep the login yourself.

The same goes for the hosting account and the site files. My answer: you own everything, including the design, the code, the content, the domain and the hosting account. If you ever want to leave, you take it all with you. I covered what to ask about contracts and ownership in more detail in my post on Colorado Springs web design pricing.

#4. If you’re replacing a site, protect your rankings

This is where redesigns lose money. If your current site already gets found on Google, a new site with new page addresses can drop those rankings unless the old addresses point to the new ones.

Google’s site move guidance spells out what a careful designer does: create a mapping of old to new URLs, use permanent (301) redirects, and “Keep the redirects for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year.” Google also says to “Expect temporary fluctuation in site ranking during the move,” and that a small to medium-sized site “can take a few weeks for most pages to move.”

So ask to see the redirect plan before launch. A good designer has a list. A risky one says Google will figure it out.

#5. Get measurement set up from day one, in your name

If you can’t see where your calls and form fills come from, you can’t tell whether the new site is working. Google Analytics and Google Search Console are both free. Ask the designer to set them up and to add you as the owner, not just a viewer.

Both of my website plans include GA4 and Search Console setup.

#6. Know what happens after launch

The quote covers building the site. Ask what happens the month after, when you need a new photo, a price change, or a plugin update breaks something.

The good sign is a written answer: how long support lasts after launch, what a care plan costs, and the hourly rate for anything else. My terms, for comparison: 90 days of support after launch. After that you choose Website Care Essential at $197 a month (hosting included) or Hosting & Domain at $230 a year with support at $197 an hour.

#7. Get the price, timeline and payment schedule in writing

A fixed price with a clear scope beats an hourly estimate that keeps growing. Ask for the page count, the timeline, the number of revision rounds, and the payment schedule in the proposal.

Mine, so you can compare: a Local Website is $4,700 for 7 to 10 pages, launched in 4 weeks. A Multi-City Website is $11,200 for 25+ pages, launched in 6 weeks. Both have first designs in 2 weeks and 3 rounds of revisions, and both are paid 50/25/25. My website design pricing page has the full breakdown, and my website cost breakdown covers what the market charges.

#Freelancer, agency or small studio?

If you’re weighing a web design company vs a freelancer, the label on the door matters less than three things: who actually designs and builds your site, who answers when something breaks after launch, and whether you can leave with everything. Here’s how I’d compare them.

A freelancer is often the simplest and most affordable option. You talk to the person doing the work. The risk is continuity: if they get sick, busy or move on, your site waits. You can shrink that risk with the checks above. If the domain, hosting and analytics are in your name, another designer can pick the site up without starting over.

A larger agency makes sense when you need several specialists working at the same time, like design, development, copywriting and ads, and you’re happy to work through a project manager. The risk is hand-offs: the person who sells you the site may not be the person who builds it, and you may never meet the designer. Ask to meet them before you sign.

A small studio or a solo designer with partners sits in between. That’s my setup. You work with me directly, not through an account manager, and sometimes I bring in specialists for specific tasks. On MX Trophies, I designed the page templates and a development partner built the WordPress and WooCommerce site. On Tycoon Games, I handled the website design and my development partner built the Shopify store. So whoever you talk to, ask the same thing: who will design my site, and who will build it?

Whichever you pick, compare quotes on the same terms: the page count, who writes the copy, how many revision rounds you get, and what support costs after launch. Ask each one to put those in writing, then run them all through the same scorecard.

#How to use this

Pick your top two or three designers. Run their live sites through PageSpeed Insights, then send each one the seven points from the scorecard by email. The ones who answer clearly, in writing, are the ones who’ll communicate clearly after launch too.

If you’d like me to look at your current site first, I’ll tell you honestly whether it needs a rebuild or just fixes. Book a free 30-minute call, or see how I approach website design.