Commissioning a website is one of those decisions you make rarely and live with for years. The quotes vary wildly, the jargon is thick, and it's hard to tell a genuinely good designer from a confident one. This is a plain checklist for accountants, solicitors, surveyors and advisers: the questions to ask, the answers to listen for, and the red flags worth walking away from.
Before you speak to anyone, get clear on what you actually need the website to do. More of the right enquiries? To look as credible as the firm really is? To stop embarrassing you on a phone screen? A good designer will start from your goals and your clients — not from templates or the latest visual trend. If the first conversation is all about their process and none about your business, that tells you something.
You don't need to be technical to separate the strong candidates from the rest. These questions do most of the work:
It isn't essential, but it shortens the road. A designer who already understands professional-services firms will grasp the trust and credibility signals your clients look for, and won't need a crash course in your regulatory world — the SRA transparency rules for solicitors, the clear, fair and not misleading standard that governs financial advisers' communications, the professional-body context for surveyors. You spend less time explaining and more time building, and there's less risk of a compliance oversight baked into the design.
A useful test: ask a candidate what they'd change about your current website in the first five minutes. A good one will talk about clarity, trust and the enquiry path — who you help, why you're credible, what to do next. A weaker one will talk mostly about colours and fonts.
Some warning signs are worth taking seriously, however polished the pitch:
One of the strongest signals of an honest partner is that they'll tell you when you don't need a full rebuild. Often a site is structurally fine and just needs its messaging, trust signals and enquiry path put right — a targeted refinement rather than starting again. A designer who reaches for the biggest project every time isn't giving you advice; they're giving you an invoice.
This is exactly why our website work is built or refined as part of a one-off £995 onboarding — we sharpen the site you already have wherever we can, and only recommend a full new build (a separate project, typically £1,500–£3,000+) when the platform, structure or brand is genuinely the obstacle. From there, a managed monthly plan (from £350) keeps the site earning enquiries. The right advice sometimes costs us the bigger project — and it's the advice worth trusting.
Score your website in two minutes across the five things that decide whether a visitor makes contact — a clear starting point before you brief anyone. Free, honest, no obligation.
Take the free scorecard Request a free reviewWho writes the copy, whether SEO foundations are included, who owns the site and domain, what happens if you leave, what the ongoing costs are, and to see live examples for firms like yours. Clear, direct answers are themselves a good sign.
Not strictly, but it helps. A designer who understands professional-services firms grasps the trust signals your clients look for and any regulatory context, which shortens the project and lowers the risk.
Guaranteed rankings, no live work to show, vagueness about ownership, long non-negotiable contracts, and no clarity on who writes the words. Any one is a reason to ask more questions.
YWR Studio — web design for UK professional-services firms · Birmingham, UK
ywrstudio.com · info@ywrstudio.com