Start by ignoring the rankings
Search "website developer in <your city>" and the first results are almost always directories - JustDial, Sulekha, Clutch - followed by listicles titled "Top 10 Web Development Companies". It is worth understanding what those pages actually are before you trust them.
Directory position is generally paid or activity-based, not quality-based. A firm at the top of a directory category has usually bought placement or has the most listings activity. "Top 10" blog posts are, more often than not, published by one of the companies in the list or by a site earning affiliate fees. Neither is a ranking of engineering quality, and neither has inspected anyone's code.
This does not make directories useless. They are a reasonable way to generate a shortlist of who exists nearby. They are a poor way to decide between them.
The five checks that take ten minutes
Before any conversation, these five can be done from your desk and will eliminate most of a shortlist:
- Open three sites they built, on your phone, on mobile data. If their own portfolio work is slow or broken on a phone, yours will be too.
- Run one of those sites through Google PageSpeed Insights. Below 50 on mobile is a real signal about how they build.
- Check whether their portfolio links actually work. Dead links to sites that no longer exist usually mean the client left, or the work was never live.
- Search their company name plus the word "reviews" - not on the directory that lists them, where the incentives are obvious.
- Look at whether they publish anything technical. Not marketing posts; anything showing they understand what they are doing.
The questions that actually reveal something
Anyone can answer "do you build good websites". These are harder to bluff, and the hesitation is often more informative than the answer:
- "Do I own the source code when I've paid?" The only acceptable answer is an unqualified yes, in writing. If code ownership is conditional on an ongoing retainer, you are renting.
- "Whose name is the domain registered in?" It must be yours. A developer holding your domain holds your business hostage, and this is the single most common way small businesses get trapped.
- "Is this custom or a theme? Which theme?" Themes are fine. Being evasive about it is not.
- "Who writes the code - you or a subcontractor?" Subcontracting is normal. Discovering it after a dispute is not.
- "What happens when it breaks at 11pm?" You want a specific answer with a timeframe, not "we'll take care of it".
- "Can I see the admin panel before I pay?" Anyone who has built one before can demo it in two minutes.
Warning signs
None of these is proof of anything on its own. Two or three together is a pattern worth walking away from.
- A guarantee of first-page Google rankings, especially with a date. Nobody controls Google's index, and anyone claiming otherwise is either lying or planning something that will get you penalised.
- Full payment demanded before any work starts.
- A quote given in under a minute with no questions asked about what the site needs to do.
- No written scope - only a WhatsApp conversation and a number.
- The portfolio is stock screenshots or sites you can't verify they built.
- Pressure to decide today because of a discount that expires.
Freelancer, agency, or platform
All three work. They fail in different ways, and matching the failure mode to your risk tolerance matters more than the price difference.
| Best for | Main risk | |
|---|---|---|
| Independent developer | Custom work where you want to talk to the person building it | One person - illness or another client can stall you |
| Agency | Larger projects needing design, content and development together | You may be sold by a senior and delivered by a junior |
| Platform (Wix, Shopify) | Getting live fast when the site does not need to do much | Monthly cost forever, and hard to migrate off later |
A note on this being our own site
This guide sits on the site of a working developer, so read it with that in mind. It is written to be useful whether or not you hire me - the checks above will disqualify plenty of firms, and they apply to me as readily as to anyone else.
If it helps: this site's code is public, and every question in the list above has an answer on the pricing and services pages rather than behind an enquiry form. That is the standard the guide is asking you to hold people to.