What people check before they hire
The searches around choosing a designer are small in number and unusually valuable. “What does a web designer do” is a common search, and the People Also Ask box under the Manchester web design results carries “How much do web designers charge in the UK?”, “How much does it cost to design a website in the UK?” and “Is web design still in demand in 2026?”. The searches with the most to teach us, though, came from this site’s own Search Console: “cybrial manchester reviews” and “can i trust them”.
That is the buyer’s real question. Everything below is a way of answering it with evidence rather than with a nicer portfolio.
The twelve checks
- A measured result, with its source. Not “increased traffic”: a Search Console screenshot with the dates showing, a form conversion rate, a load time on the live site. If they cannot produce one, they have never measured what they built.
- Portfolio sites that are still live and still fast. Open three. Time them on your phone. Check they were not redesigned by someone else since.
- A named person who will do the work. Ask “who builds it, and who do I email when it breaks?” If the answer is “the team”, you will be talking to an account manager while a junior builds it.
- You own the domain, in your name, at a registrar you can log in to. This is the one that ends businesses. If the agency registers it, you can lose the domain when you leave.
- You own the hosting account, or can have it. The site should be portable: a working copy of the files and the database, handed over on request, no exit fee.
- You own the content and the code. Written into the contract. Some template-based builders cannot give you the site at all, because it only runs on their platform; you need to know that before you start.
- The monthly fee lists what it covers. Hosting, updates, backups, security, small changes, response time. A monthly that just says “maintenance” is a monthly that will charge extra for everything.
- No minimum term, or a short one. Twelve-month locks exist to stop you leaving, not to serve you. A confident supplier lets you go monthly.
- A plain answer on what happens after launch. Who looks at the numbers? How often? What happens when Google changes something? The build is a fortnight; the site’s life is years.
- Published prices, or at least a price range you can read before the call. A studio that hides its pricing intends to price you on what you can bear.
- They tell you something you do not want to hear. “You do not need that feature”, “fix your Google profile before you spend on a site”, “a redesign will not fix a traffic problem”. Salespeople agree with everything.
- Reviews you can verify, where they were written. A Google Business Profile with specific reviews, or a Clutch profile with verified ones. A page of anonymous quotes on the agency’s own site is not evidence, and since April 2025 fake or incentivised reviews are illegal under UK consumer law.
Freelancer, small studio or agency?
| Freelancer | Small studio (1–3 people) | Agency (10+) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who does the work | The person you met | The person you met | Whoever is free; you talk to an account manager |
| Cost | Lowest | Low–mid | High; a management layer is priced in |
| Range of skills | Whatever they have | Design, build, SEO, tracking under one roof | Broad, specialist teams |
| If they are ill | The work stops | The work stops; hosting and backups do not | Someone else picks it up |
| Speed of decisions | Immediate | Immediate | Meetings |
| Best for | Simple sites, tight budgets | Small and medium businesses that want one accountable person | Large brands, big budgets, complex sign-off |
Source: Cybrial’s own assessment as a one-person studio, including the row that counts against us. The “if they are ill” risk is real and the mitigation is that everything automated — hosting, backups, monitoring — keeps running regardless.
The evidence that a small operation can compete is on the search results themselves. On 4 September 2026 a single named web designer held second position for “web design in manchester”, above agencies with three to four times his backlinks, on the strength of a personal page, a Person entity Google can identify, and reviews. Size is not the variable that decides whether your site works.
What to send when you ask for a quote
A good brief gets you comparable quotes and shows you who reads. Five things, in an email, no template needed.
- What the business does, where, and who buys. Two sentences.
- What the site must do: bring enquiries, sell products, take bookings. One job first.
- What is wrong with the current site, if there is one, and its address.
- Your budget range and when you need it live. Hiding the budget wastes everyone’s time.
- Three sites you like and why. The why matters more than the sites.
Then compare the replies on the twelve checks, not on the mock-ups. A designer who answers the ownership and after-launch questions plainly is worth more than one with a prettier PDF.
Red flags that should end the conversation
- They will register the domain for you, in their name, “to make it easier”.
- The site can only be hosted with them and cannot be exported.
- A twelve-month or longer minimum term on a monthly fee.
- A guaranteed Google ranking.
- A star rating on their website that is not linked to where the reviews live.
- Pricing that is not available until after a “discovery call”.
- A portfolio where the sites are slow, broken or no longer theirs.
- Any fee set as a percentage of your advertising spend.
How this studio answers the twelve
It would be odd to write this list and not answer it. The measured results are the case studies, each with its source and date. The portfolio sites are live and their load times are printed on this site. One named person does the work, and is on the about page. Clients own the domain, the hosting account, the code and the content from day one; there is no minimum term and no exit fee. Hosting is a listed monthly from £50 with what it covers written out. Prices are published. And the thing you may not want to hear is on the growth page: a redesign does not fix a traffic problem, and we will tell you if that is what you have.
