How to choose a web agency: an independent UK checklist

Write down what you need before you talk to anyone, shortlist three or four agencies that have built something close to it, send them all the same brief, and compare what comes back line by line rather than on the headline price. For a typical business website or shop, I’d allow four to eight weeks from first brief to signed contract (that’s my judgement, not a rule). The hour most people skip is the one spent on the contract: who owns the code, the hosting and the domain, and how you leave.

I’ve spent over 25 years in digital delivery, much of it inside agencies writing the proposals you’ll be reading. I now sit on the client’s side and I don’t take referral fees from agencies, so this is the checklist I’d want you to use on any supplier, including me.

I also offer website and system builds through Vision2, so I can have a commercial interest in delivering the work. Compare that option with other suppliers using the same brief, scope and acceptance criteria. The scoping brief is yours to take elsewhere; commissioning implementation is a separate decision.

Before you approach agencies: what to write down

Agencies price what they’re given. A vague request gets a guess, and guesses are where the arguments start later. Before the first call, get these on one or two pages:

• The business reason. What should be different a year after launch: more enquiries, fewer phone orders, trade customers serving themselves. Two sentences is enough.
• Who uses it and what they do. Customers, staff, trade accounts. The five to ten things each group needs to be able to do.
• What exists now. Current platform, hosting, who holds the domain and the logins, and the systems the site must talk to (stock, accounts, CRM, booking), described by what data moves where.
• Content. Who is writing it, roughly how many pages or products, and what needs migrating, including pages that currently bring in search traffic.
• Budget range and date. A range, honestly stated. An agency that knows your budget can propose something buildable for it. One that doesn’t will guess, high or low.
• Must-haves and later. A phase one list and a phase two list.
• Who decides. One person with authority to sign things off, and who else needs a say.

If you can’t write the business reason in two sentences, settle that before anyone quotes. The acceptance criteria builder helps turn the must-haves into something an agency can actually price.

Shortlisting: three or four, not ten

Fewer than three proposals gives you nothing to compare. More than four rarely improves the decision; it multiplies the reading, and good agencies put less into a response when they suspect they’re one of ten.

• Work like yours, on the platform you’re likely to need. A beautiful portfolio of brochure sites says little about a shop with 2,000 products and a stock feed. If you don’t know which platform yet, settle that first: choosing a platform sets out what each one costs to run and what you own.
• A size that matches yours. You want to matter to them. A small project in a large agency tends to get the junior team; a very large project in a three-person studio can overwhelm it.
• The people you’d actually work with. Ask who will do the work, not just who will pitch.
• Location, within reason. Most delivery runs on calls and shared documents now. Being able to sit in a room for a discovery workshop is useful, but it’s a tie-breaker, not a reason to choose.

What to ask

Send the same questions to every agency, in writing, so the answers can be compared.

About the team

• Who will be on my project day to day, and what else are they working on?
• Will any of the work be subcontracted, to freelancers or offshore? (That’s fine, as long as it’s disclosed.)
• Who manages the project, and how often will I hear from them?

About the approach

• What happens in discovery, and what changes if discovery finds something unexpected?
• How many design rounds are included, and what counts as a round?
• Who tests, on which devices and browsers, and against what?
• How do you handle a change request? Can I see an example change note?

About after launch

• What does support cost, how fast do you respond, and what’s excluded?
• How quickly do you apply security updates once they’re released?
• If we part company, what do you hand over, and what does that cost?

Red flags

None of these is automatically a deal-breaker. Each is a reason to ask a direct question and read the answer carefully.

Pressure to sign quickly for a discount that expires on Friday belongs on the list too. A good agency will hold a price long enough for you to check references.

Comparing proposals and checking references

Line the proposals up

Headline prices for the same job can differ several times over, mostly because each proposal leaves out different things. One includes content entry and the other assumes you’ll do it. One prices three design rounds, another one. One includes a year of hosting, another doesn’t mention it.

Put every proposal into the same table with the same rows: discovery, design, build, content, migration, integrations, testing, training, hosting, support, licences and exclusions. Where a proposal is silent, write a question rather than assuming. Then look at the cost over three years, not just the build. The proposal comparison shows three fictional proposals before and after that exercise, and how the order changes.

Price is one column. Score the others too: how well they understood the problem, the team you’ll actually get, how they handle risk and change, and whether their answers were specific.

Take up references

• Talk to people, don’t just read testimonials. Ask for two clients from the last couple of years with projects like yours, and phone them.
• Ask the uncomfortable questions. Was it on time and on budget? If not, how was it handled? What happened when you disagreed? What was support like six months later? Would you hire them again?
• Use the live sites. Open them on a phone. Fill in a form. Get as far as the payment step in a shop. You learn more in ten minutes of use than in a case study.
• Check the company. Companies House search is free and shows how long a company has traded, who the directors are and whether accounts are filed on time.

Contracts: ownership, hosting and exit

I’m not a lawyer, and for a large contract a solicitor’s read is money well spent. These are the points I’d make sure are covered before signing.

• Who owns the work. Under UK copyright law the author of a work is its first owner. An employee’s work belongs to their employer, but nothing passes to you automatically because you paid an agency, and an assignment of copyright only takes effect in writing, signed by the owner. So the contract should assign the bespoke design and code to you on payment, and give you a clear licence for anything they reuse, such as their own starter framework or third-party themes and plugins.
• Domain. Registered to your company, with you holding the registrar login.
• Hosting. Ideally an account in your name that you pay directly. If the agency hosts, know exactly what you pay for and how you’d move.
• Accounts. Administrator access to the content system, analytics, search console and payment provider, in your name.
• Exit. What gets handed over (code, database, credentials, documentation), how much notice either side gives, and what it costs. Check any minimum term on support.
• Acceptance and payment. Milestones tied to written acceptance criteria, and a warranty period after launch for fixing defects at no charge. Agree its length in writing.
• Personal data. If the agency will handle your customers’ data, UK GDPR requires a binding contract between you (the controller) and them (the processor). Ask for their data processing terms.

A short brief outline

In my experience a useful brief for a website or shop runs to somewhere between 6 and 15 pages. Longer isn’t better if it doesn’t say what finished looks like. These headings cover most website and shop projects:

1. About the business (two paragraphs)
2. The business reason, and how you’ll know it worked
3. Users and the key things each needs to do
4. Scope: phase one must-haves, and what can wait
5. Content and migration: volumes, who writes, what moves
6. Integrations: which data moves between which systems, and how often
7. Constraints: platform preference, accessibility, brand, hosting
8. Acceptance: how each part will be agreed as finished
9. Budget range and target dates
10. What you want in the proposal: a cost breakdown by the rows above, the named team, references, and three-year running costs
11. Process: deadline for questions, proposal due date, decision date

The sample documents include a specification with acceptance criteria and a proposal outline, written for a fictional business, if you want to see what this looks like filled in.

What I’d do

Spend a day on the “write it down” list before you contact anyone. Shortlist three agencies, send the same brief and questions, and insist on a breakdown you can put into a table. Phone two references each. Then read the ownership and exit clauses before you look at the price again.

If the project is small and you already have a freelancer you trust and have seen deliver, you may not need any of this formality, or me. If the stakes are higher, or the proposals you’ve got don’t line up, I write the brief and compare the responses as a fixed-price piece of work: project scoping and agency selection starts from £750, or £1,500 for portals and systems.