Johannesburg has hundreds of web design companies, from one-person operations in Randburg to agencies in Sandton with whole floors of staff. Price is the easy filter and the least useful one. These seven checks take about an hour and tell you more than any pitch deck.
1. Look at the work, then open it on your phone
Every studio has a portfolio page. Open three of the sites on it, on your phone, on mobile data. Do they load in under three seconds? Is the text readable without zooming? Does the contact form work? Most South African web traffic is on phones, and Google ranks the mobile version of a site first. A slow, awkward mobile site is a slow, awkward business card.
2. Ask who is actually going to build it
In many agencies the person who sells the project never touches it, and the build goes to a junior or an outsourced team. Ask who will scope it, who will design it, who will write the code, and whether you will speak to them directly. Small senior teams, where the people who quote are the people who build, make fewer mistakes because nothing gets lost in hand-over.
3. Insist on a written scope and a fixed price
A scope is a list: the pages, the features, who supplies content, how many design revisions are included, and what happens after launch. If a company quotes from a phone call without writing that down, the price will move once work starts. A fixed written quote protects both sides. It only changes if you change the scope.
4. Check who owns what
This is where businesses get hurt. Ask, in writing, whether you will own the domain, the hosting account, the design files and the source code at the end. Some companies register the domain in their own name, host on their own account and keep the code, which means you cannot leave without starting over. Everything should be in your name, with the logins handed over.
5. Ask to see the site while it is being built
A staging link is a private version of your site you can open any time during the build. Studios that work this way have nothing to hide and catch misunderstandings early. 'You will see it at the end' is how a six-week project becomes a six-month one.
6. Ask what search work is included
'SEO included' means nothing without detail. The minimum for a new site is page titles and descriptions written for each page, fast loading on phones, structured data so Google understands the business, a sitemap submitted to Search Console, and a Google Business Profile set up for Johannesburg. Ask which of these are in the quote. Ongoing ranking work (content, links, ads) is a separate conversation, and Google Ads done properly can pay for itself quickly.
7. Find out what happens after launch
Sites need hosting, email, updates, backups and the occasional fix. Ask whether a support period is included, what the monthly cost is afterwards, and how quickly someone responds when the site is down at 09:00 on a Monday. A company that has looked after clients for years will say so; ask for one you can phone.
A note on local versus remote
Being in Johannesburg is useful for the first meeting and for training. It matters less than process. A good Cape Town or Durban studio with a staging link and weekly demos will beat a Sandton agency that goes quiet for a month. We happen to be in Johannesburg and we still run most of the work the remote way, because it is faster for everyone.