Hiring a web team can feel like buying a black box. You see a demo. You get a number. You hope it works.
This article is a little light reading on how to pick a team that ties business goals to platform, UX, content, and build quality.

Some of the highlights we have included:
• Your homework before you make a call
• The interview questions that are simple to ask and hard to fake
• The basic roadmap that prevents project creep and keeps everyone talking
• What should be in writing in your proposal

Over the years we have designed, developed, and reworked hundreds of sites for clients. From that experience, we have put together a process that serves as the scaffolding we build our web projects on. This article is designed to inform you about what to look for, whether you’re updating a current site or creating something completely new.

The Cost of No Strategy

Most websites start with hope. A few pages, a promise to come back to the hard parts later, and a quiet wish that the leads will roll in. Then life happens. Content stalls, plugins pile up, and the site that once felt shiny starts to creak.

The sites that win share one habit: They connect business goals to platform, user experience (UX), content, and build quality. That is the whole game. This guide shows you how to hire a team that does exactly that.

Your Homework: Start with Outcomes

Before you talk tech, you need to get crystal clear on what the site must do for you. Web is often misunderstood as just an item that you purchase and someone else builds. Although that is partially true, to get what you want, you are going to have some skin in the game.

Building a website is a team sport. A good team will minimize this and make the process as frictionless as possible, but having the answers to a few questions will save you time and money.

Goal Definition Checklist

Before contacting any web teams, be ready to answer these crucial questions:

• Goal in one line: The single, measurable objective for the site (e.g., 20 new qualified leads per month).
• Audience Tasks: Who the site is for and the primary action they must complete (e.g., book, buy, sign up).
• Content Status: What content exists, what is missing, who writes, and who approves.
• Integrations: External systems you rely on: CRM, POS, scheduling, email, payments.
• Metrics: Key data you will watch monthly: leads, bookings, revenue, key page conversions.
• Constraints: Timeline you care about, budget range, and team bandwidth.
• Inspiration: Bring 1-3 example sites you like to show how you want people to feel and act

New Build or Update: Is an Overhaul Worth It?

The first major decision is whether you need a shiny new website or an update to your current site. There is a time where a patch stops making sense. If your current site is slow, dated, hard to update, or glued together with old tech, a new build is usually the cheaper path, sometimes now but definitely in the long run. Modern design, accessibility, and clean SEO structure are hard to retrofit.

What is the Purpose of Your Site? Have your business goals changed since the site was originally built? For example, converting an old site not built for e-commerce or a loyalty program won’t be as effective as building a new one with those services as a core priority. The performance gap can be significant: your competitor with a modern site might be seen up to 5× more often online. Start where growth starts.

Vetting the Team: Portfolio and Process Review

You’ve completed your homework and compiled your notes; now it’s time to start interviewing teams.

We use the term team rather than developer intentionally here. Delivering a site that adheres to your brand’s tone, supports future marketing needs, and remains adaptable for years requires a full, cross-functional team.

The First Call

A good team will spend most of that call learning, not selling. Expect thoughtful questions, note taking, and a simple plan for next steps. Price and timeline should follow discovery and a written scope. If numbers show up before understanding, you are buying a package, not a solution.

Portfolio: Show Me the Receipts

Ask for 2 or 3 case studies that match your goals. Look at the sites like you are the customer.

What to Look For:

• Functionality (Performance and Adaptability): Does the site load fast and stay fast? How does the site look and function on different screen sizes, open the site on your phone, is the experience as good or better than the desktop?
• Design (User Experience and Engagement): What is your first reaction, does the site feel right? Is the information and visual content organized in a way that flows? Here’s the key: while clean coding and functionality are vital, the design element (User Interface/User Experience) is what truly creates action from your clients. Calls to action, user flow, and how long a person stays on a page are all rooted in psychology and design. Ensure the firm you hire places a high value on UI/UX design and has a dedicated team in place. This focus on engagement and psychology is what separates a basic site from an effective business tool.

The marriage of form and function is key. If everything in their portfolio looks the same, you are seeing a house style. You want a system built specifically for your audience, not a generic theme with your logo placed on it.

Process: The Roadmap That Keeps Projects on Rails

A top development team will lay out the entire project process, always in the form of a detailed proposal. A good baseline for development should include these five non-negotiable phases:

1. Discovery: Workshop and a brief that captures goals, audience tasks, content reality, integrations, and success metrics.
2. Definition: Sitemap, user flows, wireframes, content plan, and the platform decision that fits your goals and team.
3. Design and Build: Component library, responsive templates, CMS structure, integrations, and a staging link you can actually click.
4. Testing: Browsers and devices, performance checks, accessibility checks, forms, a redirects map, and analytics events set up. This includes providing you with access to test the site yourself before launch.
5. Launch and Support: Go live, monitor, fix what pops up, train your team, and roll into a maintenance rhythm.

The Advanced Interview Checklist

A truly professional web team will have many of these key points “baked in the cake” in their presentation. If not, use these questions. They are simple to ask and hard to fake, this ensures you are comparing the same scope and quality across every team you review.

• What is your discovery and research approach for the website? Strategy before pixels. They should capture audience needs, goals, content reality, and integration needs captured up front so the build is scoped right and doesn’t balloon later.
• What web deliverables are included by phase (UX, design, build, launch)? A real project includes sitemap, user flows, wireframes, component library, responsive templates, content model, redirects map, QA checklist, and training docs—not just page comps.
• Which platform do you recommend for us and why (Webflow, WordPress, Shopify, custom)? Fit beats fandom. The stack should follow goals, budget, team skills, and integrations, so you aren’t stuck with the wrong CMS or costly rebuilds.
• How will you handle content: who writes, who migrates, and what’s the approval flow? Content is the schedule killer. This needs to be assigned and have clear deadlines keep the project moving.
• What accessibility standard do you target ? Accessibility is reach, compliance, and brand responsibility: Ask about ADA accessibility.
• What is your SEO plan (technical + on-page) from day one? Requires clean URLs, proper titles and tags. Search can be a moving target, ask about ongoing SEO options.
• What licenses or third-party costs should we expect (themes, plugins, fonts, hosting, integrations)? No surprise invoices. Clarify who purchases, who renews, and how costs scale.
• How many rounds of revisions per phase, and what’s your change-order process? Controls timeline and budget. Understand what is in scope and what is not, and what triggers a change order.
• What happens after launch (support window, bug policy, enhancement rates, training)? The site starts its life at launch. You need support, a maintenance schedule, and clear a clear service level agreement (SLA).
• What’s the hosting plan (provider, and who owns the account? ) Hosting should be part of the discussion especially if it is not part of your contract with clear SLAs.

Reviewing the Proposal: What Must Be in Writing

After the initial call and fact-finding, the team should provide you with an entire scope of work. The proposal you receive is the actual work you are paying for. It should make the project feel smaller, and transparent, not bigger.

Look for and make sure to review the following:

• Scope with explicit deliverables
• Assumptions and Dependencies so you know what the timeline assumes
• Milestones for discovery, definition, design, build, testing, launch
• Revisions and Change Orders with revision rounds and out of scope rates for change orders.
• Costs and Payment Terms plus any recurring or third-party fees
• Post-Launch Support window, maintenance options, and documentation
• Ownership of code, CMS admin, design files, and licenses

If you cannot find it in the document, you do not have it. In the age of AI just drop the doc your favorite LLM and ask if it is missing any of the above.

What a Good Partnership Feels Like

You will feel heard. You will know what is next each with each phase of the project. Your team will have one point of contact who answers questions and moves work forward. The staging link will look more like your business and less like a demo. Launch will be calm. After that, you will have a small list of improvements and a clear plan to ship them.

Tahdah! You have a new site, now what? 

Launch day is a massive milestone, but it’s not the finish line, it’s the starting line for growth. A great development team delivers a site that perfectly represents your business, but the site itself is only one part of the equation. Think of it as the front porch of a house you are selling. It isn’t the most important part of the house, but it is what everyone sees when they are driving by.

It’s easy to get hyper-focused on the build and then commit the costly error of “launch and forget.” To achieve your initial goals, whether it’s driving new business or informing your audience, you must think past the immediate need for a site. A static site will only do some of the heavy lifting, and the opportunity cost of neglecting it post-launch is high.

This is why a comprehensive approach is non-negotiable. We focus on the total solution: the recruitment and retention of your customers. This involves continuous post-launch efforts like updating content, driving traffic, retaining visitors, and capturing valuable customer information. These are the activities that truly move the needle for your business.

Key Takeaways: Why Invest in a Professional Team

Hiring a professional team shifts your website from being an item you bought to a revenue-driving asset. The core value of an agency partnership comes down to strategy and expertise:

• Strategic Efficiency: Agencies recommend features and tools you wouldn’t think of, saving you time and increasing long-term efficiency by avoiding costly rebuilds down the road.
• Content Management: They help organize and structure overwhelming content into a logical system that is easier to manage, update, and scale.
• Brand Quality: Skilled designers and developers bring creative vision and attention to detail, resulting in a more polished, reliable, and effective product that strengthens your brand.
• Focus on Results: A professional team focuses on measurable outcomes: improved visibility, greater accessibility, better user experience, and tangible growth not just ease of use.
• Reliable Maintenance: Ongoing partnership ensures someone knowledgeable understands your site and can keep it updated as technology and business needs change.

Next Steps

If you want a quick read on fit, let us know. We can review your current, or dream site and build a right-sized plan for you. Fifteen minutes is enough to see if the timing and goals line up.

Good luck. Build the right thing. Then let it work.

About the Author

Jason Clerget is the Co-Owner and Founder of Propaganda Creative, a Spokane-based full-service design firm.