Choosing a web designer in Chester: the 7 questions to ask
Short answer: ask about ownership, pricing in writing, who writes the copy, whether you get real town pages or a template, 3 live examples, what the monthly fee includes, and what happens when you stop paying. Chester has dozens of designers, from pay monthly providers at £30 a month to agencies at £8,000, and the price alone tells you very little. The answers to these 7 questions tell you most of what you need.
The Chester market in 2026
So you know the field before you pick.
| Type | Typical cost | What you tend to get |
|---|---|---|
| Pay monthly providers | From £30 a month, £0 to £499 setup | A template you rent. Cheap to start, nothing to keep. |
| Freelancers and small studios | £400 to £1,500 up front | Most small business sites. Quality varies with the person. |
| Chester and Cheshire agencies | £1,500 to £8,000 | Custom design, a team, a project manager. Built for larger firms. |
| Webdesign Cheshire | £399 up front, £150 a month care plan | 5 pages, copy written with you, local SEO, you own it. |
Blue Whale Media publishes £495 and DotGO £499 for entry sites, which is worth knowing because published prices are rarer than they should be. A designer who will not put a number on their own website is going to price you by what they think you can pay.
1. Who owns the domain, the site and the content?
The answer should be “you, from day one”, in writing. Check 3 things: the domain is registered in your name, you can have a copy of the site files, and the words and photos are yours to reuse. Pay monthly providers often fail all 3, and some agencies fail the second one. If you cannot take the site with you, you are renting.
2. Is the price in writing, and what is excluded?
Ask for the full price and a list of extras before you pay a deposit. A fair quote names the number of pages, the number of rounds of changes, and the price of a shop, a booking system and extra pages. Ours are £350, £120 and £60 a page. The quote to be wary of is “from” a figure with no list underneath it.
3. Who writes the copy?
This is the question most people forget, and it is where cheap sites go wrong. If the answer is “you send us the text”, the site will sit unfinished for 3 months, because nobody likes writing about themselves. The answer you want is “we write it with you”: they ask the questions, you answer them, they write the pages, you correct them. Ask how many rounds of changes are included.
4. Will I get pages for my town, or a template?
Search “plumber Chester” and Google wants a page about plumbing in Chester, not a generic services page with a Chester postcode in the footer. Ask whether your site will have a page for each town you cover, naming real areas and landmarks, and whether that is in the price or an extra. A template with your logo on it ranks for your business name and nothing else.
5. Can I see 3 live examples, and where do they rank?
Not a portfolio of screenshots. Three live websites for businesses like yours, with the search terms they rank for. Then do the search yourself on your phone. If the designer cannot show you one site that ranks for a trade plus a town, they have not yet done the thing you are paying for.
6. What exactly does the monthly fee include?
Hosting costs a designer £5 to £20 a month. A fee of £30 to £60 is mostly margin for keeping the site up. A fee of £100 to £150 should buy work: edits, a new page or article each month, security updates, and a report on where you rank. Ask for the list, item by item. Then ask whether you can decline the monthly fee and still keep the site. The answer should be yes.
7. What happens if I stop paying?
The cleanest answer is “nothing happens to the site, it is yours, you just host it elsewhere”. The worst is “the site goes offline and the domain stays with us”. Everything in between needs reading carefully: notice periods, exit fees, and whether the content comes with you. Get the answer by email so you have it on record.
Local or not, and does it matter?
Chester is small enough that a local designer can come and see you, photograph the premises and know which areas to name on your pages. That is worth something for a business that relies on local search. It is not worth paying double for. A designer in Manchester who answers all 7 questions well beats a designer in Chester who dodges 3 of them.
How to use the answers
Put the 7 questions in one email and send it to 3 designers. The replies sort themselves. One will answer every question plainly, with numbers. One will send a brochure. One will ask for a call to understand your needs before saying anything. The first one is the designer you want, whatever their price.
The same test applies to us. Our prices are on the pricing page, we reply within one working hour, and every answer above is the one we give.