Choosing a Web Designer in Newcastle: The Questions Worth Asking

Short answer: Judge a web designer on three things. Whether they ask about your business before they talk about design. Whether you will own everything at the end. And whether they can point to a site they built that is still working two years later. Everything else, including the portfolio, is secondary.

A portfolio tells you what someone can make look good in a screenshot. It tells you almost nothing about whether the site worked.

The questions

"Who owns the site when we are finished?"

The answer should be: you do. Domain, hosting account, content management system, the lot, all in your name, all with your logins.

If any part of the answer involves the designer holding the domain, or a proprietary platform you cannot leave, walk. This is the single most common way businesses get quietly trapped, and it usually only becomes apparent when the relationship ends badly.

2. "Can I have the logins now?"

Same question, different angle. The answer to this one is either "yes" or a story. Listen to which you get.

3. "What happens if I want to change something myself?"

There is a right answer for your situation, not a universally right answer. Some businesses want to update everything themselves and need a genuinely editable site. Others will never touch it and would rather it be locked down and fast.

The wrong answer is a designer who assumes without asking.

4. "What will this site be able to do that ours cannot do now?"

Push for specifics. "Modern design" is not a capability. "Customers can filter products by size and finish" is. "Trade customers can log in and see their pricing" is.

If the answer is entirely aesthetic, you are being sold a paint job. Sometimes a paint job is exactly what you need. Just know that is what you are buying.

5. "Show me a site you built two years ago that is still live."

This is my favourite question and it is remarkably revealing.

New portfolio pieces look great, because everything looks great on launch day. A site that is still standing after two years of the client adding pages, changing prices and uploading their own photos tells you whether the thing was built to survive contact with a real business.

Ask if you can call that client.

6. "How will the site be structured, and can I see that before you design anything?"

Good web work starts with structure: what pages exist, how they relate, what a customer is trying to do. If a designer goes straight to visual concepts without agreeing structure, the design is decorating a plan nobody wrote.

For a trade or wholesale business this matters enormously, because the structure is the hard part.

7. "What is your approach to our product data?"

Only relevant if you sell things, but if you do, this question separates the field fast.

A designer who has done ecommerce properly will immediately start asking about your product attributes, your variants, your naming conventions and the state of your spreadsheet. A designer who has not will say "just send us a CSV." The second answer costs you three months later.

8. "What is explicitly not included?"

Copywriting. Photography. Product data entry. Migration of existing content. Ongoing hosting. Post-launch fixes. Search setup.

Every one of these is a common exclusion and every one of them is a real cost. A quote that does not name its exclusions is a quote that has not been thought through.

9. "What happens after launch?"

Websites are not finished at launch, they are begun. Ask what the arrangement is for the first month, when the small things surface. Ask what a change costs. Ask what the response time is when something breaks.

10. "Will you be doing the work?"

Especially relevant with studios. The person in the meeting is not always the person building the thing.

11. "What would you talk me out of?"

The best answer to this question is a real one. A designer who has never talked a client out of anything has either had eleven perfectly-briefed clients in a row or is agreeing to whatever pays.

Answers that should worry you

"We can have it live in two weeks." Possible, for a small brochure site with content ready. If you have products, it is not possible, and the corners being cut are ones you will find later.

"We use our own custom platform." Sometimes fine. Usually a lock-in. Ask what happens if you want to move.

"SEO is included." Included how? A checklist of technical basics is legitimate and should be standard. An ongoing SEO program is a different service and cannot be free.

A quote with no discovery. If someone can price your site before understanding your business, they are pricing a template.

What a Newcastle web project actually costs

For a well-structured site with real content behind it, budget from around $8,000. A more involved ecommerce or trade build with product data, customer tiers and integrations sits meaningfully higher.

Under about $5,000 you are generally buying a template with your logo dropped in, produced quickly. There is nothing wrong with that if it is what you need and everyone is honest about it. The problem is when it is sold as something else.

Frequently asked questions

Squarespace, Shopify, WordPress or Webflow?

Squarespace for a straightforward site you will manage yourself. Shopify if you sell products, including in a trade context. Webflow for design-led sites where you want more control. WordPress when you need genuine flexibility and have someone to maintain it. The platform matters far less than whether the person building it knows that platform deeply.

Should I hire someone local?

It helps, particularly for a first project, because being able to sit in a room speeds things up. But the person's experience with your kind of business matters more than their postcode.

How long should a website take?

A straightforward site, four to six weeks. An ecommerce or trade build with product data, eight to sixteen weeks, and the product data is usually what determines it.

Do I need to write the copy?

Someone does, and it will not write itself. Either budget for it or block out real time. Copy is the most common reason web projects stall.

Can I just use AI to build my website?

You can get a serviceable site out of AI tools quickly. What you cannot get is a considered structure for a complicated business, or a brand that looks like anything other than the default. For a simple business, it is a reasonable starting point. For a trade catalogue, it is not.

Weighing up a web project? I do the work myself, so the person in the first conversation is the one building it. Get in touch.

Laura Dunkley runs Fallon Digital, a digital marketing and design consultancy in Newcastle, working with established trade, wholesale and corporate brands across the Hunter and beyond.