Most website regrets are not about the build. They are about what happened afterwards — who owned it, who could change it, and whether anybody was still there in two years.
You can see a portfolio and form a reasonable view of whether somebody can build a site that looks right. What you cannot see is the part that actually determines whether this goes well: whether they document anything, whether you own what they produce, whether a small change takes two days or two weeks, and whether they are contactable in eighteen months.
Nearly every rescue job we take on — and we take on a lot — started with a build that was fine. The problem came later: no documentation, no repository, a domain registered in the developer's name, and eventually no replies.
So the questions worth asking are mostly about afterwards. A developer who answers them clearly is telling you something about how they work, and one who is vague is telling you something too.
What we do
Working UK-wide and internationally — directly with businesses, and white label behind design and marketing agencies.
Discuss a projectIt should be you, in a repository you can access. "We host it for you" is not the same answer, and the difference matters the day you want to leave.
Yours. Always. A domain registered to your developer is the single most common way businesses lose control of their own website.
Who patches it, who hosts it, what a change costs and how quickly. If this has not been discussed, it has not been priced either.
And specifically which parts. "It has a CMS" can still mean every meaningful change needs a developer.
A good answer is specific. Vagueness here becomes change requests later, which is where projects turn sour.
Our favourite question. Anybody who has never advised a client against something is either very lucky or not listening.
Fine if you also own the domain and can get a copy of the site. Not fine as a reason not to know where it lives.
Confidence before anybody has established what the site must do is a guess, and it gets corrected later through change requests.
It is not unlimited. Either the definition is narrow or the service will quietly degrade. Ask what a typical month actually includes.
A lot of our work is delivered white label or under agreement, so these describe the problem and the approach rather than naming the client.
Ten brand websites across one instruments group. Several we built, the rest we inherited — and all ten are hosted, maintained and supported by the same team.
Migration · DevelopmentFive separate legacy CMS sites, five databases and five themes, consolidated into a single multilingual multisite CMS platform.
Web application · IntegrationAn API-connected membership platform handling publications, events and a two-way CRM sync — thousands of profiles and hundreds of transactions a week.
What a website actually costs in the UK, what drives the price up or down, and how to tell whether a quote is reasonable before you commit.
When a website redesign is worth it, when the foundation is fine and the content is the problem, and how to redesign without losing your search rankings.
Website accessibility done properly: what WCAG AA actually requires, why retrofitting costs more, and an honest view of accessibility overlay tools.
Ownership, what happens after launch, what we would talk you out of. We would rather answer them now than have you find out later.