How to Choose a Web Studio: 12 Questions Before You Sign

Every studio has a portfolio; the portfolios all look good — nobody shows the failures. The questions below are how you find the failures anyway: not by asking about them directly, but by testing whether the answers are specific, unguarded, and boring in the way that real work is boring. Ask them in order.

On scope and money

1. "What is included, line by line?" Design, copy, development, launch checks, and what happens after. The quote that cannot be itemized is the quote that will be renegotiated. See what a website costs for the lines to expect.

2. "Who writes the words?" The most common project-killer hides here. Copy in scope: the project runs. Copy out of scope and unwritten: the project stalls for months whatever the calendar said.

3. "Who owns the domain, the hosting, and the files?" The only acceptable answer is you. Anything else converts a purchase into a subscription you cannot cancel — the expensive pattern documented in the true cost of a cheap website.

4. "What happens after launch?" Bug-fix window, maintenance terms, response times. "We'll be around" is not a term.

On the work itself

5. "Walk me through a project like mine." Not the showcase version — the calendar version: phases, feedback rounds, what you will be asked to provide and when. A studio that cannot narrate its own process has not got one.

6. "Show me work for a business like mine." Sector experience matters less than size-and-shape experience: an organization of your complexity, an audience like yours. Our equivalent is the cases page, where the shape of each engagement is written down.

7. "What will you refuse to do?" The best studios have answers: refusing to launch without redirects, refusing template shortcuts on performance, refusing to invent client testimonials. A studio that will do anything has already decided what corners look like.

8. "How do you handle phones and slow connections?" If the answer is a pause, the work will be designed on fiber and experienced on prepaid data. Mobile-first is a discipline, not a breakpoint — see mobile-first design.

On the relationship

9. "Who exactly does the work?" Names, roles, and whether they are employed or subcontracted. You are not hiring a brand; you are hiring hands.

10. "What does the contract say happens when we disagree?" Revision rounds, scope changes, and the exit: what you walk away with if the relationship ends mid-project. Read this clause before you need it.

11. "How do we communicate, and on what rhythm?" Weekly check-ins, defined feedback windows, a named person. Projects die of silence more often than of mistakes — a point worth internalizing from how long websites take.

12. "Why should I not hire you?" The strongest question in the list. An honest studio answers it — wrong fit of size, budget, sector, or timeline — because a studio that wants every project takes bad ones. We answer it ourselves: businesses needing a page this week on a rented template are served faster elsewhere, and we say so.

Reading the answers

The pattern to look for is specificity with edges: numbers, names, dates, refusals. The pattern to flee is accommodation — every question answered with enthusiasm and no detail. Vague yeses are how a project starts that later discovers it never had a scope.

One practical close: ask for one reference from a project that went sideways. Not the showcase client — the one where something went wrong and was repaired. How a studio talks about that project tells you more than the entire portfolio.