Web Design Northampton: Nine Questions to Ask Before You Sign Anything
Choosing a studio is the riskiest part of any website project. These are the questions that separate a partner from a supplier, in the order we would ask them.
If you are comparing studios for web design in Northampton, you will quickly notice that every proposal looks similar: a page count, a timeline, a price and a few screenshots. The differences that decide whether the project goes well are hidden in what the proposal does not say. These nine questions bring them into the open, and we would be glad if you asked them of us too.
Who owns what when the project ends?
Ask for it in writing. You should own your domain name, registered in your own account rather than the studio's. You should own the content, the images you paid for and, ideally, the code written for you. Some agencies keep the build on their own platform and rent it back to you monthly. That can be a fair arrangement for a simple brochure site, but you should choose it knowingly, with a clear answer to the question of what happens if you want to leave.
What exactly am I getting for the fixed price?
A fixed price is only as good as its scope. Ask what counts as a page, how many rounds of design feedback are included, who writes the copy, who sources the photography and what happens when you change your mind halfway through. A good proposal names the things it excludes as clearly as the things it includes. When a quote is oddly short, the missing detail usually reappears later as a change request.
Will the site be built for my customers or for the studio's convenience?
Listen for the word research. A studio that has never asked who visits your site, on which devices and with what question in their head is guessing. Even a one-hour call with your sales team, or ten minutes reading the search terms in your analytics, changes what gets built. The strongest answers start with your customers' tasks: finding a price, booking a visit, checking a delivery area.
How fast will it load, and how will you prove it?
Speed is part of the product. Ask which measurements the studio targets, and whether they will report them after launch. The usual yardsticks are Google's Core Web Vitals, where a page counts as good when the main content appears within 2.5 seconds, interactions respond within 200 milliseconds and the layout does not jump about. A studio that cannot talk about these numbers is leaving a quiet but measurable tax on every enquiry.
How will people find it?
Search engine optimisation is not a plug-in you add at the end. Ask who plans the page structure, the page titles and the redirects if you are replacing an old site. A rebuild that changes every address without redirects can wipe out years of search history in a week. If the answer is that SEO is a separate package, ask what is in the main package that stops you being hurt by launch day.
What happens on the day it goes wrong?
Sites fail at inconvenient moments: an expired certificate, a plug-in update that breaks the checkout, a hosting outage on a Friday afternoon. Ask who is on the other end, how you reach them and how quickly they commit to respond. Ask where the site is hosted, how often it is backed up and whether anyone has ever tested restoring one of those backups.
Can my team actually edit it?
A website nobody on your team dares touch goes stale. Ask for a demonstration of editing a page, adding a news item and changing an opening time, using the real editing screen, not a slide. Training and a short written guide should be part of the handover rather than an optional extra.
Is it accessible and compliant from the first day?
The current accessibility standard for the web is WCAG 2.2, which the W3C published in October 2023, and most organisations aim for level AA. Ask how the studio tests for it, not only whether it claims it. In the same breath, ask how cookie consent is handled, because UK rules require clear consent before non-essential cookies are set, and a banner that merely announces them does not meet that bar.
Who will I actually deal with?
Finally, ask who designs, who builds and who answers your emails. Small studios are often better here, because the person who sold the work is usually the person doing it. Whatever the size, ask to speak to a past client you can phone. Studios proud of their work will offer.
None of these questions is hostile. They are the ones a careful buyer in Northampton, Daventry or Wellingborough would ask before commissioning a builder or an electrician, and a studio worth hiring will enjoy answering them. If you want to see how we answer them, send us your list and we will reply to every line.