Choosing a web design company is mostly a purchasing problem, not a design problem. Decide what the site has to do, write it down once, and send the same brief to two or three providers. Then judge them on evidence you can check yourself: how their existing sites perform, what their proposal actually commits to, who owns the result, and what happens after launch.
This guide covers that process. It doesn’t cover prices — for cost tiers, ongoing costs and how to compare quotes, see our separate guide on how much a website costs in Vancouver.
Decide what the site has to do first
The most common reason a website project disappoints is that nobody wrote down its job. Pick the primary one, because it changes almost everything downstream:
| Main job | What success looks like | What that changes |
|---|---|---|
| Lead generation | Calls, form enquiries and quote requests from people nearby | Page structure built around services and areas, clear contact paths, local search setup |
| E-commerce | Online orders, average order value, repeat purchases | Catalogue, payments, shipping and tax rules, inventory sync, returns policy |
| Booking or scheduling | Appointments booked without a phone call | A booking tool, staff calendars, reminders and a cancellation policy |
| Credibility and recruiting | People arrive already convinced, and applicants apply | Photography, case studies, team pages, careers listings |
| Support and self-service | Fewer routine phone calls | Documentation, account logins, search, integrations with your systems |
Write a one-page brief: the main job, who the site is for, a page list, who supplies the words and photos, which tools it has to connect to, and your timeline. Send that same page to everyone you approach. Without it, the quotes you get back describe different projects and can’t be compared.
Freelancer, agency or website builder
All three build good websites. They differ in coverage, cost and how much of the work you carry.
- A website builder you drive yourself is the cheapest in cash and the most expensive in time. It’s a reasonable answer for a handful of pages and a contact form.
- A freelancer or small studio often gives you the person doing the work, which makes decisions fast. Ask what happens when they’re on holiday, unwell or between contracts, and who holds your credentials.
- An agency brings a team, a process and continuity, at a higher price. Ask who will actually work on your project, not who is in the meeting.
A middle path works well for many small businesses: have a professional build and structure the site properly, then edit it yourself afterwards. Whichever route you pick, ask how you would move your content elsewhere if you ever change providers.
How to check a portfolio with public tools
A portfolio page proves someone can make a screenshot look good. Open three or four of their live sites and test them yourself. None of this requires special access.
Does it load fast for real people?
Run the site through Google’s PageSpeed Insights. It reports two different things: field data from real Chrome users over the previous 28-day collection period, and lab data from a simulated load. Field data is the one that reflects reality. Look at the three Core Web Vitals and Google’s “good” thresholds: Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less, and Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less, each measured at the 75th percentile of page loads and split between mobile and desktop. Interaction to Next Paint became a stable Core Web Vital in 2024, replacing First Input Delay.
Does it get found?
Search for the client’s business name, then for the service and city they’d want to win, and see what turns up. For local results, Google says ranking is based on relevance, distance and prominence, so a business in a different suburb legitimately won’t appear for your neighbourhood. Check whether the site has a sensible page for each service rather than one page listing everything.
Does it convert, and does it work on a phone?
Open it on your own phone. Can you find the phone number in two seconds? Is the form short enough to finish at a bus stop? Does anything jump around as the page loads? Then ask the provider a harder question: which of these clients would be happy to take a call from us? A designer whose clients are happy will answer that.
What a proper proposal contains
BDC advises being skeptical of any developer who gives you a price without taking the time to understand your business. A proposal worth signing should name, in writing:
- The scope: page list by type, features, integrations and which content they write versus which you supply
- What’s explicitly out of scope, and what a change costs
- How many rounds of revisions are included at each stage
- The platform, and whether you can edit the site yourself afterwards
- Hosting: where the site will live, who holds the account, and what it costs each year
- An accessibility target and a performance target, stated as something measurable
- If you have an existing site: who maps old URLs to new ones and sets up the redirects
- Testing: which browsers and devices, and who signs off
- The handover package, training, and the payment schedule tied to milestones
- What happens if the project stalls on either side
If you’re replacing a site, treat redirects as non-negotiable. Google’s guidance on site moves with URL changes is to redirect old URLs to their new equivalents and keep the redirects in place, generally for at least a year. Skipping that step is the classic way a redesign loses traffic the week it launches.
Ownership: domain, hosting, analytics and content
Settle ownership before any work starts. It is far harder to fix afterwards, and a provider who resists is telling you something useful.
- Domain. CIRA, which manages .ca domains, advises registering the domain yourself rather than letting a third party do it, because that can become a problem if you part ways. Your business should be the registrant, with your own login and multi-factor authentication switched on.
- Hosting. The account should be in your business’s name and paid by you, with the provider added as a user.
- Analytics and Search Console. Be an Administrator in Google Analytics and a verified owner in Search Console. If every verified owner is removed, everyone else eventually loses access too.
- Design, code and copy. Under Canada’s Copyright Act, “the author of a work shall be the first owner of the copyright therein,” with an exception for work made in the course of employment. A contractor is not your employee, so ownership doesn’t pass to you automatically — and the Act says no assignment is valid unless it is in writing, signed by the owner of the right. Get that assignment, or a licence broad enough to cover what you need, in the contract.
- Stock images, fonts and plugins. Ask whether the licences are in your name and what happens to them if you leave.
SEO promises to distrust
Google’s own guidance is the best reference here, because it removes the argument. Google says: “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google,” and warns you to be wary of firms that email you out of the blue or claim a special relationship with Google. On local results, Google is equally direct: “There’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google.”
Two more things worth knowing. First, Google’s spam policies treat buying or selling links for ranking purposes and excessive link exchanges as link spam, so a package that promises hundreds of backlinks is proposing something Google explicitly disallows. Second, you remain responsible for what a contractor does to your site — including techniques that can get pages removed from search results. Ask every provider to explain, in plain language, exactly what they will change.
Accessibility and performance expectations
The reference standard is WCAG, the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. WCAG 2.2 was published in October 2023 and updated in December 2024, and has three conformance levels: A, AA and AAA. Level AA is what most policies and large customers specify. In British Columbia, the Accessible British Columbia Act currently applies to more than 750 public sector organizations rather than to private businesses, though the province has said coverage will expand; if you sell to government, a health authority or a school district, expect accessibility to appear in the contract.
You can sanity-check a designer’s work yourself. The W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative publishes “Easy Checks”, a short list a non-expert can run: page title, image alt text, headings, contrast, resizing text, keyboard access and a visible focus indicator, form labels and errors, moving content, and multimedia alternatives. Try navigating a portfolio site with the Tab key alone. WAI is clear about the limits, though: “a web page could seem to pass these checks, yet still have significant accessibility barriers.” Automated tools and quick checks never replace a real evaluation.
On performance, agree a target rather than an adjective. Google notes there is “no single signal” for page experience and that Core Web Vitals are used by its ranking systems, while cautioning that good scores don’t guarantee top rankings. A reasonable contract term is that the launched site meets the “good” thresholds for all three Core Web Vitals on the main templates, tested on mobile.
Maintenance: who fixes what after launch
Launch day is the start of the relationship, not the end. Ask exactly what a maintenance plan includes, and what it doesn’t.
| Item | The question to ask |
|---|---|
| Software updates | Who applies platform, theme and plugin updates, how often, and who tests afterwards? |
| Backups | How often, where are they stored, how long are they kept, and has a restore been tested? |
| Uptime and security | Who is monitoring, who gets alerted, and what happens if the site is defaced or goes down? |
| Content changes | How many are included per month, how fast, and what’s the rate beyond that? |
| Bugs versus changes | How long after launch are defects fixed free, and who decides which is which? |
| Response times | What are the hours, and what’s the commitment for an urgent issue? |
| Reporting | What do you receive each month, and does it tie back to the site’s main job? |
| Exit | What notice is required, and what do you get — files, database, content and credentials? |
Red flags and the questions to take into the meeting
Walk away, or at least slow down, when you see:
- A price quoted before anyone has asked what your business does
- A guaranteed ranking, or a claim of a special relationship with Google
- The domain or hosting registered in the provider’s name “to make it simpler”
- No written scope, or a scope that exists only in an email thread
- A portfolio of sites that are slow, unfinished or no longer online
- Reluctance to name the client references you can call
- A monthly fee with no stated end and no clause explaining what you keep if you leave
Questions to ask every provider
- What do you think this site’s main job is, based on our brief?
- Who will actually do the design, the build and the writing?
- Which three of your live sites are closest to our project, and may we call those clients?
- What platform, and can our team edit pages ourselves afterwards?
- Will the domain, hosting, analytics and Search Console be in our business’s name?
- Does the contract assign copyright in the design, code and copy to us, in writing?
- What accessibility level are you building to, and how will you test it?
- What performance targets will the launched site meet on mobile?
- If we’re replacing a site, who maps the old URLs and sets up redirects?
- What exactly is in the fixed price, and what counts as a change?
- What does maintenance include each month, and what is the response time for an urgent issue?
- What do we receive at handover, and what happens to everything if we leave?
We design and build websites for small businesses across the region — see our web design and development service, or web design in Vancouver, North Vancouver, Richmond and Langley. For budgeting, start with our website cost guide, or contact us with your one-page brief.