Most advice here says look at their portfolio. Portfolios show whether someone can make something look good — which is the easiest thing to judge and almost never what goes wrong.
Here's what actually separates a good outcome from an expensive one.
Do I own the site and the domain outright? Must be yes, immediately, no qualifiers. Some arrangements leave you renting your own website and unable to leave without rebuilding. Ask what happens if you walk.
Who writes the content? This kills more projects than anything technical. Builds stall for months because nobody agreed who was writing the words, and everyone assumed it was the other party. Settle it before you start.
Is search setup included? "SEO-friendly" means nothing at all. Ask specifically: titles and descriptions per page, structured data, sitemap, Search Console. Find out if those are extra before you sign, not after.
What happens after launch? Who patches it, backs it up, fixes a broken form. Sites rot without maintenance. No clear answer is itself the answer.
Can I change text myself? You should be able to update a paragraph without paying anyone. If every word means a support ticket, the site will go stale and you'll both resent it.
What does year two cost? The build price isn't the total. Hosting, domain, maintenance, support all keep going.
A guaranteed ranking. Nobody controls Google. Anyone promising a position is either misleading you or planning to rank you for something nobody searches, then showing you a chart about it.
A price before any questions. If they can quote before understanding what you need, they're selling a fixed product and calling it a solution.
Vagueness about ownership. One-word answer. Anything longer is a problem.
One platform for every client, always. Sometimes that's genuine specialism. Often it's the limit of what they can build.
No curiosity about your customers. A site that doesn't understand who's buying won't convert them, however it looks.
They ask more questions than you expected, and most are about your customers rather than your colours.
They tell you something you didn't want to hear. That you don't need what you asked for, or that a cheaper option would serve you better. People willing to talk themselves out of work are almost always the ones worth hiring.
They explain technical things plainly. Jargon usually hides something.
They still look after sites they built years ago. Launching a website is easy. Staying responsible for it is the part that costs.
Ask for a site they built three years ago. Open it now.
Still fast? Still current? Still maintained? That tells you more about what you're buying than any portfolio of last month's launches.
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