Before You Hire a Web Designer

Before anything about design or platform, define the primary outcome. Common goals include generating enquiries or calls, booking appointments, selling products or services, collecting quote requests, or establishing trust before an offline purchase. A site can support several goals, but the project should identify the one that matters most.

Ask: if the website succeeds, what will visitors do more often than they do today?

That answer is more useful to a designer than "we need a modern website," because it tells them what to build toward.

Document who the site is actually for: primary and secondary customer groups, the problem they're trying to solve, and what they need to know before they'll act. A contractor, for example, might have homeowners researching a renovation, homeowners ready to request a quote, and property managers looking for a recurring contractor. Each group can need different content and a different path through the site.

Then decide which actions the site should make easy: call, contact form, quote request, booking, purchase. Rank them into primary, secondary and informational rather than presenting five equally loud calls to action.

There's no rule that says a small business site needs a specific number of pages. The right architecture depends on your business model, the number of distinct services, customer information needs, and how much you can realistically maintain. A five-page site with genuinely useful content can outperform a fifty-page site full of thin, duplicated pages.

Content delays are one of the most common project risks, because layout decisions depend on real information. Before a designer starts, agree who is responsible for each content type: copy, photography, testimonials, product data and policies. Don't assume "web design" automatically includes copywriting, photography or legal drafting unless it's explicitly scoped.

List every feature under consideration, from booking and ecommerce to CRM integration and live chat, then classify each as Must have at launch, Should have, or Later / optional. This single exercise prevents more scope creep than any contract clause, because it forces a conversation about what's actually necessary versus what's simply possible.

"Freelancer or agency" and "WordPress or custom" often get discussed as if they're the same question. They're not. A freelancer can build a custom-coded site, a WordPress site or a Shopify store. An agency can do the same. Make two separate decisions: what delivery and support model fits your business, and what technology fits your requirements.

Instead of asking "freelancer or agency," ask who is responsible for strategy, copy, design, development, SEO, QA, accessibility, analytics, launch and support, and what happens when that person is unavailable.

"Custom website vs WordPress" is an imprecise comparison, because WordPress itself can be used with a fully custom design and development. The more useful questions are about editing, hosting, portability, ecommerce fit, maintenance responsibility and total cost, not which platform is trendiest.

A provider asking good questions about your business before recommending a solution is itself a useful signal. Google's own guidance on hiring SEO help says a competent provider should want to understand what makes your business unique, who your customers and competitors are, and how success will be measured, and recommends checking references and being cautious of guaranteed rankings.

Don't compare total prices until the scopes are normalized. A $2,000 quote and a $7,000 quote can describe genuinely different products: different page counts, whether copywriting is included, whether there's a migration plan, what ownership terms apply. Build a line-by-line comparison before the number matters.

There's no universal "right" price for a small business website. It depends on scope, content readiness, provider model and support requirements. A more useful exercise than chasing a number is calculating total cost of ownership: the one-time project cost, plus recurring costs like domain, hosting, plugins and support, over a realistic horizon like three years.

For current Ontario pricing ranges, see how much a website costs in Ontario.

Google explicitly advises involving SEO expertise early when planning a redesign or new site, because architectural decisions such as URL structure and content organization affect search friendliness. At minimum, define a crawlable structure, descriptive titles, useful headings, and a redirect plan if URLs are changing.

W3C's WCAG 2.2 is the current accessibility standard, organized around content being perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. In Ontario, AODA/IASR website rules apply to designated public-sector organizations and to businesses and non-profits with 50 or more employees, referencing WCAG 2.0 Level AA; smaller businesses aren't covered by that specific rule, though accessible design is good practice regardless of size.

For a deeper practical breakdown of WCAG, Ontario AODA website requirements, testing and accessibility statements, use the Website Accessibility Toolkit.

On privacy, PIPEDA applies to private-sector organizations across Canada handling personal information in commercial activity, with Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec operating their own substantially similar provincial laws. For every form or tracker, know what data is collected, why, where it goes and how long it's kept.

On security, the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security recommends baseline controls including patching, strong authentication, backups and access controls for small and medium organizations. Decide during procurement, not after launch, who owns updates, backups and incident response.

"Do I own my website?" is too broad a question. Under Canada's Copyright Act, the author of a work is generally the first owner of copyright, and any assignment must be in writing and signed to be valid. Paying the invoice does not automatically transfer every right in every design, photo or line of code used. The written agreement should say what's assigned, what's licensed, and what remains third-party or open-source.

A completed handover should make it possible for another competent provider to operate, migrate or rebuild the site using only the assets and access you receive. Before final acceptance, confirm the business can log in independently, forms reach the right inbox, analytics is receiving data under an account you control, and backups exist.