Hiring a web designer on the Gold Coast? Twelve questions to ask before you sign, what good answers sound like, and the red flags to watch for.
Aidan Pawluk
Design Director ·
Choosing a web designer is one of those decisions that looks simple until you start comparing quotes. One designer is $1,500, another is $12,000, and both say they build “high-converting websites”. The difference usually only becomes obvious months later, when the site is slow, hard to update or simply not bringing in enquiries.
The good news is that a handful of questions will tell you most of what you need to know. These are the twelve we would ask if we were on your side of the table, along with what a good answer sounds like.
Not a template gallery, and not sites built by someone they subcontract to. Ask to click through live websites, on your phone as well as a laptop. Pay attention to how fast they load, how easy they are to use and whether they look like they were designed for that business or dropped into a theme. You can click through four of ours on our work page.
Direct industry experience is a bonus, not a requirement. What matters more is whether they understand how your customers buy. A tradie’s site needs a phone number that is impossible to miss and suburb pages that rank locally. A clinic needs booking and trust. A retailer needs a smooth checkout. A good designer will talk about your customers before they talk about colours.
Ask what changed after launch: more enquiries, better rankings, fewer phone calls asking basic questions. Be wary of vague claims or big numbers with no context. An honest designer will tell you what they measured and what they can and cannot take credit for.
You want a clear answer with stages, not “we just get started”. Ours is four steps: discover the business and plan the pages, design the homepage then the inner pages, build and test on every device, then launch and hand over. The detail is on our web design page.
At larger agencies the person who sells you the project is often not the person who designs it. Ask who designs, who builds and who you talk to day to day. Fewer hand-offs usually means fewer things lost in translation.
Copy is the part most likely to stall a project. Find out whether copywriting is included, whether they will work with your existing content, or whether you are expected to supply everything. Words sell; a beautiful layout full of placeholder text does not.
Revisions should be clearly defined in the quote. Unlimited revisions sound generous, but a defined process with a couple of solid rounds is often what keeps a project moving.
WordPress, Webflow and Framer all have their place. The right answer depends on how many pages you need, what features you want and who will update the site. If a designer only ever uses one platform, ask why it suits your business specifically. We compare the options in WordPress vs Webflow vs Framer.
You should be able to change text, swap images and add a blog post without calling anyone. Ask for a demo of the editing experience and whether training is included at handover.
These should be part of the build, not optional extras. Page titles, descriptions, headings, schema, sitemaps, image sizes and redirects from your old site are all set up during development. A site that loads slowly on a phone loses visitors before they ever see your offer, which we explain in Core Web Vitals explained.
You should own your domain, your content and the website itself. Be cautious of arrangements where the site lives on the designer’s account and can only be moved for a fee. Ask who holds the logins for the domain, hosting and site admin.
Ask for a quote that lists the build, plus any ongoing costs such as hosting, premium plugins, email services and maintenance. A lower quote that leaves out copywriting, SEO setup or training is not actually cheaper. Our guide to website costs on the Gold Coast breaks down what typically sits behind the price.
At Vectorr the person designing your site is also the person you talk to. We build custom, conversion-focused websites on the platform that suits the job, with SEO, speed and mobile handled during the build, and we hand over a site you own and can edit yourself. One-off website builds start from $3,000 + GST, and full website design and development is also included in our Business plan, both laid out on our pricing page.
If you are comparing web designers right now, book a free intro call and ask us all twelve.
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