Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Contractor Web Designer

You've got two or three quotes on the table, or you're about to ask for them. Every designer has a portfolio of sites that look good. Every one of them says the site will be "mobile-friendly" and "SEO-optimized". None of them has told you, in a sentence you could check, how the site is going to get your phone to ring.

Before you hire someone to build a contractor website, ask about leads, not looks: which searches the site will be built to show up for, whether each service and area you work gets its own page, where a quote request goes and whether a copy is kept besides email, how you'll know which page brought in which job, what a site they built for another contractor actually produced, who writes the words, and what you own if you part ways. A designer who answers in specifics — real search terms, a page list, a live site you can search for yourself — is building something to make the phone ring. One who answers in adjectives is building a brochure.

Fast answer. Ask every designer the same seven questions about search terms, pages, where leads go, how results are measured, proof, copy and ownership — and hire the one whose answers you can check.

Why the Usual Hiring Checklists Miss the Point

Search "questions to ask before hiring a web designer" and you get lists of twenty to forty questions. Most are fine. They ask about the designer's process, what platform they use, how many rounds of revisions you get, whether you can edit the site yourself. They are written for any business buying any website.

A contractor isn't buying any website. You're buying something that has one job: turn a homeowner searching for your kind of work, in your area, into a call or a quote request that reaches you. Design matters to the extent it serves that. Revision rounds don't.

So cut the list down to the questions whose answers predict whether the site will produce work — and learn what a good answer sounds like, because the wrong answers are usually confident.

The Seven Questions That Predict Whether a Site Will Bring In Work

1. "Show me a contractor site you built — and tell me what it produced." Not a screenshot: a live address. Then do the test yourself. Search the service and town that site is supposed to win — furnace conversion bedford, roof repair dartmouth — and see whether it appears. A good answer comes with numbers the designer is careful about: how many enquiries, over what period, and what they can't attribute. A weak answer is "the client was really happy with it."

2. "Which searches will my site be built to show up for?" A designer who has thought about your leads will name actual search terms, in your towns, for the jobs you want more of — and will ask you which jobs those are. "We'll make it SEO-friendly" isn't an answer. It's a description of every website sold this year.

3. "How many pages will it have, and what's on each one?" Ask for the page list before you sign. The difference between a site that gets found and one that doesn't is often right there: a page for each service you want calls for, and a page for each area you work, each written the way customers describe the job. A five-page template with one "Services" page listing everything is built to be looked at, not searched for. I've written about how a contractor homepage should be structured if you want to see what goes on the page itself.

4. "When someone fills in the quote form, where does it go?" The right answer names a real inbox you check, and a second copy stored somewhere else — a database, a CRM, a log — so a quote request can't vanish if an email gets filtered. Forms that look like they work while their emails land in spam are more common than anyone admits; the contact-form section of our email guide explains why, and storing every lead is the fix. Ask what the form asks, too — every field you don't need costs you enquiries, and the fields that earn their place are fewer than most forms carry.

5. "How will I know which page brought in which job?" This is the question that separates a website from a marketing investment. If the answer is "you'll see your traffic in Google Analytics," you'll know people visited and nothing about whether they called. A good answer explains how each enquiry is tied to the page where the visit started, so in six months you can say which service page is paying for itself and which isn't.

6. "Who writes the words, and what do you need from me?" Somebody has to write your service pages, and the words decide whether a homeowner trusts you enough to call. If it's you, know that before you sign — it's the step that stalls most builds. If it's them, ask what they'll need: your tickets and licences, the areas you'll drive to, the jobs you want more of, the ones you'd rather not get. A designer who needs nothing from you is going to write generic copy.

7. "If we part ways, what do I own?" The domain registered to your business, the site files, the Google Business Profile and Search Console in your name, and your lead history. This one deserves more than a line, and it gets one: monthly subscription vs. owning your contractor website walks through what stops when you stop paying, and the four things a contract should say.

Why this matters: every question above has an answer you can check — a live search, a page list, a test submission, a contract clause. That's the point. A pitch you can't check is a pitch you're taking on faith.

Red Flags to Watch For in a Web Designer's Pitch

Most of these aren't dishonest. They're signs that the person across the table is selling a website, and you're buying leads.

A guaranteed ranking. Google's own guidance for hiring help with search is blunt: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google." Anyone who promises a position is either guessing or doing something you don't want done to your domain.

A portfolio of screenshots with no live addresses. Screenshots prove a site was designed. A live address you can search for proves it works — or shows you that it doesn't.

A price with no page count. "$1,500 for your website" means nothing until you know what's in it. Ask for the page list; you'll often find the cheaper quote is a different product, not a better deal.

One "Services" page for everything. If you do furnace conversions, heat pumps and ductwork, and all three share one page, Google has one page to match against three different searches. It'll usually match none of them well.

The domain or accounts in their name. Registering your domain, your Google Business Profile or your Search Console property to the web company is convenient for them on day one and expensive for you the day you leave.

No questions about your business. If a designer quotes without asking what work you want more of, where you work, and who you lose jobs to, the site is going to be built from a template of someone else's business.

Tips for Comparing Two Quotes

You don't need to understand how websites work to compare them. You need the same answers from each person.

Tip 1: Send all seven questions in one email, to every designer. Written answers are comparable and they're on the record. How someone answers an email is also a fair preview of how the project will go.

Tip 2: Put the answers side by side. One row per question, one column per quote. The gaps show up fast — usually in questions 2, 4 and 5.

Tip 3: Do the search test on their best example. Take the site they're proudest of, search the job and town it's meant to win, on your phone, logged out. Thirty seconds, and it tells you more than the pitch did.

Tip 4: Price the whole thing, not the build. Add any monthly fees over three years, and ask what's extra — copywriting, photos, extra pages, the Google Business Profile setup. What a contractor website costs in Canada breaks down where the money actually goes.

Sources: Google Search Central — Do you need an SEO? for the ranking-guarantee and Search Console-access guidance; published pricing and timelines of Canadian contractor web studios for the ranges in the FAQ. Read September 2026.

How We Answer Them

We build contractor websites, so here are our own answers in plain terms — hold us to the same standard.

A coded contractor site is $1,950 and a service-area build covering several towns is $2,950, one-time, live in 3–4 weeks. Every service you want calls for gets its own page; the $1,950 site includes a page for your main service area, and the service-area build adds a page for each town you cover. Quote requests go to your inbox and are stored as well, and each one records the page the visit started on. You own the code, the domain and the accounts. We write the copy, and we'll ask you a lot of questions to do it.

For proof, the example we'd point you to is a Bedford HVAC and sheet-metal company we built from a standing start: $75,000+ in quoted work since launch and five leads in a single week from organic search. That's quoted work, not closed revenue, and the case study is careful about what it can and can't attribute. It also lists the searches the site was built to win, so you can run question 1 on us.

If you're still weighing what a site should cost, read what a contractor website costs in Canada. If you already have a site that isn't bringing anything in, why a contractor doesn't show up on Google covers what's usually wrong before you pay for a new one. Or see every site we've built and what it produced.