I’m about to do something slightly ridiculous: I’m going to tell you exactly how to evaluate web design companies, including how to evaluate mine. Because after 15 years of running a web design agency in Indianapolis, I’ve heard enough horror stories from business owners who hired the wrong company to fill a book. And the mistakes are almost always the same.
Someone picks an agency based on price alone. Or they go with whoever has the flashiest website. Or they hire their nephew’s roommate who “knows WordPress.” Eighteen months later, they’re sitting across from me explaining how their site is slow, their developer ghosted them, and they’re pretty sure they got hacked last month.
So here’s the guide I wish every business owner would read before signing a web design contract. Use it to evaluate us, use it to evaluate our competitors. I don’t care. I’d rather you make a good decision than a fast one.
Look at Their Actual Work, Not Just Their Own Website
This is the most common trap. An agency has a gorgeous website, so you assume they’ll build you a gorgeous website. But their site is a controlled environment. They had unlimited time, no client feedback loops, and complete creative control. The real question is: what do their client sites look like?
Ask to see live websites they’ve built. Not screenshots in a portfolio. Not mockups. Actual live URLs you can visit on your phone. Load them up. Click around. See how fast they are. Check if they’re mobile-responsive. Look at whether the design feels current or like it was built three years ago.
If you want to see what this looks like in practice, here’s our portfolio with links to real, live client websites you can visit right now. We think that’s the only kind of portfolio that matters.
Ask How Long They’ve Been in Business (and How Many Sites They’ve Built)
Web design has a low barrier to entry. Someone can take an online course, buy a WordPress theme, and call themselves a web designer by next Tuesday. That doesn’t mean they can manage a real project with real stakeholders, real content challenges, and real deadlines.
Experience matters. Not because older is automatically better, but because an agency that has survived for 10+ years has figured out how to deliver consistently. They’ve dealt with scope creep, difficult content migrations, hosting disasters, plugin conflicts, and clients who disappear for three months in the middle of a project. They have systems for all of it.
At Sharp Guys, we’ve been doing this since 2011 and have delivered nearly 300 websites. That track record isn’t just a number. It represents hundreds of problems we’ve already solved that a newer agency would be encountering for the first time on your project.
Understand Their Process Before You Talk Price
A web design company’s process tells you more about the quality of the finished product than anything else. If someone quotes you a price without asking detailed questions about your business, your audience, and your goals, that’s a red flag the size of a billboard.
A good process typically includes some form of discovery (learning about your business and objectives), content planning (figuring out what goes on the site and how it’s organized), design (creating the visual look and feel), development (building the actual site), testing (making sure everything works across devices and browsers), and launch with a plan for what happens after.
Ask the agency to walk you through their process step by step. If they can’t articulate it clearly, they probably don’t have one. If you want to see what a structured process looks like, here’s how we do it.
Find Out Who Actually Does the Work
This is a big one, and most business owners never think to ask. Many agencies, even well-known ones, outsource their design and development to freelancers or overseas teams. The person you talk to in the sales meeting isn’t the person building your site. Sometimes they’re not even in the same country.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with distributed teams. But you should know who’s doing the work and be able to communicate with them. Ask directly: “Will the people on this call be the people building my site?” If the answer is evasive, pay attention to that.
At Sharp Guys, we never outsource. Our entire team is local to Indianapolis. The person you talk to during the sales process is one of the people who will actually touch your project. We think that matters.
Read Reviews, but Read Them Carefully
Google reviews and testimonials are useful, but only if you read them with a critical eye. Look for specifics. “They were great!” tells you nothing. “They redesigned our site and our lead form submissions increased by 40% in the first three months” tells you a lot.
Also look for volume and consistency. A company with 5 reviews might have just asked their friends. A company with 100+ reviews that are consistently positive over several years has earned that reputation through sustained performance.
Check out what our clients say and then go verify it on Google. We have over 110 five-star reviews because we’ve been delivering consistently for over a decade, not because we ran a review campaign last month.
Ask What Happens After Launch
This is where a shocking number of web design relationships fall apart. The site launches, everyone celebrates, and then the agency vanishes. Six months later you need to update a plugin, fix a broken form, or make a change to your homepage, and nobody answers the phone.
Before you sign anything, ask: What does post-launch support look like? Is there a maintenance plan? What does it include and what does it cost? What’s your response time if something breaks? What’s the hourly rate for changes after launch?
We offer an optional monthly maintenance plan at $230/month that covers updates, security monitoring, uptime checks every 5 minutes, one hour of monthly support, and a discounted hourly rate for additional work. It’s optional because we believe in earning your ongoing business, not locking you into it. But having a plan matters because unmaintained WordPress sites are ticking time bombs.
Get Real About Pricing
If an agency won’t give you a ballpark range before a lengthy discovery process, that’s annoying but not necessarily a red flag. If they quote you $2,000 for a custom website, that IS a red flag. Good work costs real money, and agencies that undercut the market are either cutting corners you can’t see or planning to nickel-and-dime you with change orders later.
For context, we wrote an entire breakdown of what websites actually cost in 2026. And we built a pricing calculator based on our actual project data so you can get a real estimate before you ever talk to anyone. We did that because we think pricing transparency should be the norm in this industry, not the exception.
Check Their SEO Knowledge (Even If You’re Not Buying SEO)
A web design company that doesn’t understand SEO will build you a site that looks nice but is invisible on Google. In 2026, with AI answer engines changing how people find information, this matters more than ever.
Ask about their approach to page speed, mobile optimization, title tags, heading structure, schema markup, and content strategy. If they look at you blankly or say “we can add SEO later,” find someone else. SEO isn’t a plugin you install. It’s a foundational part of how a website should be built. Every site we deliver includes solid SEO foundations as standard.
Trust Your Gut on Communication
Pay attention to how the agency communicates during the sales process, because it only goes downhill from there. If they take a week to respond to your initial inquiry, imagine how long they’ll take when you’re six weeks into a project and need a revision. If their proposal is vague and full of jargon, imagine what their project updates will look like.
The best agency relationships feel like partnerships. You should feel heard, not sold to. You should get clear answers, not marketing speak. And you should be able to reach a real human when you have a question.
The One-Page Cheat Sheet
When you’re evaluating web design companies, ask these questions. The answers will tell you almost everything you need to know:
- Can I see live websites you’ve built? (Not screenshots. Real URLs.)
- How long have you been in business, and how many websites have you delivered?
- Walk me through your process from start to finish.
- Who actually builds the website? Are they in-house or outsourced?
- What happens after launch? What does ongoing support look like?
- What’s the realistic timeline and investment for a project like mine?
- How do you handle SEO during the build?
Any good agency will answer these confidently and specifically. If someone gets defensive or evasive, that tells you something too.
Ready to See How We Stack Up?
We obviously think Sharp Guys is a great choice, but we’d rather earn that conclusion than just assert it. Browse our portfolio. Read our client testimonials. Try our pricing calculator. Check out our FAQ. And if you like what you see, request a free website assessment and we’ll have a real conversation about your project.
No 47-slide deck. No high-pressure close. Just honest answers from people who actually build websites for a living.
