How to choose a web agency for a corporate website

Choosing a corporate website is not the same as choosing a supplier. You enter a relationship that lasts years, because the site is never finished. Yet agencies are usually judged on the best pitch and the lowest price, exactly the two things that no longer count after launch. Here is what to look at instead.

1. Ask what happens after launch

The most important part of a corporate website begins after the launch: updates, new pages, improvements. Ask explicitly how maintenance and further development are arranged. An agency that is vague about it sees your site as a project with an end date, not as something that keeps living.

2. Check whether design and build sit together

Many agencies outsource the build or throw the design over the fence to developers. Every handover costs intent. Ask who designs it and who builds it. If those are the same people, or at least the same team, the odds are far better that what you see is what goes live.

3. Watch who will manage the site

A beautiful site only the agency can edit is a gilded cage. Ask for a demo of the editing environment and put the simple question: can my team change a page in here themselves? If the answer is "we will do that for you", you will pay for every text change.

4. Ask about speed and accessibility

A corporate site is judged by people and by Google. Slow pages cost visitors and positions, and inaccessible sites exclude people and pose a legal risk. Ask about Core Web Vitals and accessibility. An agency that takes this seriously names concrete measures instead of reassurances.

5. Judge the questions they ask

A good agency asks more than it answers in the first conversations. Anyone who comes straight in with a price and a design without understanding your organisation is selling a template. Anyone who first wants to know what the site has to do, and for whom, is thinking with you.

6. Ask about the people, not the portfolio

A portfolio shows the best work, not the average collaboration. Ask who you will really talk to, and whether those are the same people who do the work. At larger agencies one sells and another builds; at a small studio you speak to the maker.

7. Be careful with the lowest price

The cheapest quote is rarely the cheapest site. What you do not pay up front for thinking and building, you pay later in repairs, slow pages and a site that no longer fits after a year. Judge the price on what sits under it, not on the amount alone.

In short

Choose an agency on what happens after launch, on who really does the work, and on the questions they ask. A good pitch is easy; a site that lasts years is the work that comes after.

This is how we build corporate websites: one team from sketch to software, that stays after launch.