Choosing a Website Developer: What Businesses Should Actually Look For

The Screenshot Trap

Most businesses choose a website developer by comparing portfolio screenshots and prices. Both are nearly useless signals: screenshots show taste (which you can also get from a template), and price tells you nothing about what you receive for it.

A website is a business asset. Evaluate the developer the way you would evaluate any investment: by what it returns.

The Questions That Actually Filter

"How will my site load fast?" The answer should include specifics - static generation or server rendering, image optimization, measured Core Web Vitals - not "we optimize everything." Speed is a Google ranking factor and a conversion factor; slow sites quietly lose both.

"How will customers find it?" A competent developer builds technical SEO in from the start: semantic HTML, per-page metadata, structured data (JSON-LD), a sitemap, and - increasingly important - content that AI search engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity can understand and cite. If the developer's own site is invisible on Google, believe what you see.

"What happens after launch?" You should own the domain, the code, and the hosting account. You should be able to update content without paying for every comma. Ask how updates work before signing.

"Can it grow into an application?" Today a brochure site; next year a booking system, customer portal, or dashboard. A developer with full stack development capability builds a foundation that grows instead of one you replace.

Red Flags Worth Walking Away From

• ▸No live sites they can show performing well on speed tests you run yourself
• ▸Everything built on a page builder they resell with a markup
• ▸Vague answers about SEO ("we handle that") with no artifacts to show
• ▸No mention of mobile, accessibility, or analytics until you ask
• ▸Lock-in: their hosting, their CMS, their contract, forever

What a Good Engagement Looks Like

Clear scope and a fixed quote. A preview link early, so you react to a real site instead of a slideshow. Technical SEO and analytics as standard, not upsells. Documentation and full ownership at handover.

That is how I run business website projects - and this portfolio, custom 3D effects and all, doubles as the performance proof: run it through any speed or SEO tool you like. If you are comparing developers right now, send me the brief and I will tell you honestly whether I am the right fit for it.