How to vet a web designer
Web designers turn brand and content into pages that look good and convert. Review live sites they designed, not only mockups, and check them on a phone. Do pages load quickly, read easily and guide visitors toward a clear action? Strong designers can explain the goal of each page and how layout, imagery and copy support it.
Technical awareness matters even for designers who do not code. Look for understanding of responsive web design, image and font performance, content management systems and web accessibility basics such as contrast, headings and focus states. Designers who ignore these create beautiful pages that frustrate developers and fail real visitors.
Ask how they work with content. The best designers request real copy early, design with realistic text lengths and plan for how pages will grow when marketing teams add new content after launch. Ask to see how a past site evolved after launch.
- Live sites that work well on mobile devices.
- Clear reasoning about goals and calls to action.
- Awareness of performance, SEO and accessibility basics.
- Experience designing for a CMS and reusable sections.
- Designs with real content, not placeholder text.
- Understanding of how forms, tracking and analytics affect page design.


