{"id":1031,"date":"2026-09-07T06:38:32","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T06:38:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saywebdesign.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1031"},"modified":"2026-09-07T06:47:52","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T06:47:52","slug":"red-flags-when-hiring-a-web-designer-avoiding-poor-choices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saywebdesign.co.uk\/blog\/red-flags-when-hiring-a-web-designer-avoiding-poor-choices\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Flags When Hiring a Web Designer: Avoiding Poor Choices"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a project manager at a web design Cornwall agency, I’ve had a front-row seat to a lot of website horror stories \u2014 usually from clients who come to us after<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

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The “cheap and cheerful” trap<\/h2>\n

One client came to us after choosing a freelancer purely on price. The site looked fine on the surface \u2014 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 \u00a3500\u2013\u00a31,000 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 \u2014 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?<\/p>\n

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Ask about turnaround time and iterations \u2014 early<\/h2>\n

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 \u2014 it just means taste is subjective, and good designers tend to have a distinctive style. A one-person band doesn’t have that flexibility.<\/p>\n

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Watch how they take your money<\/h2>\n

A major red flag: any designer who asks for most or all of the money upfront. We work on staged payments \u2014 a deposit to start, then payments at agreed milestones \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

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Who actually owns your website?<\/h2>\n

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 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

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Check the small print no one thinks to check<\/h2>\n

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 \u2014 but it tells you the designer wanted the site live, not the site right<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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No phone calls? Be cautious<\/h2>\n

If every interaction before you’ve paid a penny happens over email, think twice. You’re about to spend a meaningful amount of money \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

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Learned the hard way, too<\/h2>\n

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” \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

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Already stuck with a bad designer?<\/h2>\n

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 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thinking of hiring a web designer? Our Cornwall web design agency reveals the red flags to watch for \u2014 from hidden fees to locked-up code \u2014 so you avoid a costly mistake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1035,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-responsive_web_design","category-visual-branding-creative-design"],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saywebdesign.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saywebdesign.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saywebdesign.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saywebdesign.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saywebdesign.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1031"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.saywebdesign.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1036,"href":"https:\/\/www.saywebdesign.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031\/revisions\/1036"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saywebdesign.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saywebdesign.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saywebdesign.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saywebdesign.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}