As a project manager at a web design Cornwall agency, I’ve had a front-row seat to a lot of website horror stories — usually from clients who come to us after things have already gone wrong somewhere else. Over the years, the same warning signs keep showing up. If you’re about to hire a web designer, here’s what I’d want you to know before you hand over a deposit.
One client came to us after choosing a freelancer purely on price. The site looked fine on the surface — but every time they tried to change something themselves, it broke something else. Worse, whenever they needed help, the freelancer took weeks to respond, or simply went quiet. There was no proper content management system, so even adding a blog post meant going cap-in-hand (and paying) for developer time. That’s the biggest myth in this industry: that cheaper is smarter. I’ve watched people spend £500–£1,000 on a website, only to be back rebuilding it within a year because it can’t do what their business actually needs. You end up paying twice — and in the meantime, your website is meant to be validating you as a professional business. Do you really want that job done by the cheapest bidder?
When you’re interviewing a designer, ask directly: what’s your turnaround time, and how many rounds of revisions do I get? A freelancer juggling multiple projects solo can leave you waiting a long time. As an agency, we can turn things around faster, and if a particular designer’s style isn’t quite hitting the mark for a client, we can simply swap them onto another designer in-house. That’s not a failure — it just means taste is subjective, and good designers tend to have a distinctive style. A one-person band doesn’t have that flexibility.
A major red flag: any designer who asks for most or all of the money upfront. We work on staged payments — a deposit to start, then payments at agreed milestones — backed by a proper contract that protects both sides. Without that, you’re relying entirely on trust with someone you may have only ever emailed.
This one matters more than people realise. You should always own your own domain, so you can move hosts if a relationship sours. But ownership goes further than that. We once took over a site where the previous developer had deliberately encrypted the booking system code — meaning only he could ever touch it. The client had paid for that code and technically owned it, but couldn’t use it without going back to him every time. We ended up rebuilding the entire booking system from scratch. When we build something, the client owns the code outright, no strings attached. If a designer won’t confirm that upfront, walk away.
Some of the biggest giveaways of a rushed job are things a non-technical client would never think to look for: no meta descriptions or page titles, missing alt text on images, no Open Graph image for social sharing, not even a favicon in the browser tab. None of it looks obviously “wrong” to the untrained eye — but it tells you the designer wanted the site live, not the site right.
If every interaction before you’ve paid a penny happens over email, think twice. You’re about to spend a meaningful amount of money — you should know there’s a real person who’ll pick up the phone if something goes wrong later, not just an inbox that goes quiet.
I’ll admit we’ve got this wrong ourselves, early on. We once took on a client who blamed a previous agency for being “unreasonable” — but once we dug in, it turned out multiple people on their side were making conflicting decisions. We ran iteration after iteration trying to nail it, and the project ran hugely over time and budget. Since then, we always ask upfront: who are the actual decision-makers, and can you show me examples of sites you like and dislike? It saves everyone the pain.
If you’re mid-project and can already tell it’s heading nowhere good, don’t force it to the finish line. Go and talk to a professional agency — even just for advice. Often there’s more worth salvaging than you’d think, and at the very least you’ll get a clear-eyed view of what it would take to launch something you’re actually proud of. Don’t be afraid to ask.
