The short version
- 01Ask to see live sites for real businesses, and open them on your phone, not just a portfolio grid.
- 02Meet the people who will do the work, in person or on video, before you sign anything.
- 03Make sure your team can edit the site after launch, and that every old page redirects so your rankings survive.
There's no shortage of web designers in Salt Lake City. Search for one and you'll get agencies, freelancers, template shops and somebody's nephew who is very good with Squarespace. Most of them have a nice portfolio. That tells you less than you'd think.
We build websites for Salt Lake City businesses, so we're not neutral here. But the questions below are the ones we'd ask on your side of the table, and they work just as well on us. If you want the general checklist for hiring anyone anywhere, read hiring a web designer or developer in 2026. This one is the local version.
Look at live sites, not a portfolio grid
A portfolio grid is a set of screenshots, chosen by the designer, at the size that flatters them. A live site is the real thing. Ask for addresses, then open them on your phone, standing in your own parking lot with one bar of signal. That's how your customers will see your site too.
Check three things. Does the page load before you lose patience? Can you find the phone number, the hours or the main action without hunting? Does anything jump around as it loads? Then look for the boring parts: the contact form, the service pages, the footer. Anyone can make a homepage hero look good.
Ours are on our web design page, and you can open every one of them: The Grid, Elase Medical Spas, Dynapac Motion, Bespoke Autohaus and ICO Fairbourne Station, where renters can look, lease, apply and pay without leaving the site. Ask any designer you're considering for the same thing. Live addresses, not a slideshow.
Ask what they know about your customers
A Salt Lake business usually sells to people across the valley, from Ogden to Lehi, and most of them find you on a phone, often through the map results first. A good designer asks where your customers come from, what they search for and what they need to see before they call. Then they build the pages around those answers, not around a template's idea of a homepage.
Listen for specifics. A designer who has worked with local businesses talks about service areas, reviews, the phone number in the header and the questions people ask before they book. One who only talks about the look is designing for you, not for your customers.
Ask who you'll actually meet
A lot of web projects are sold by one person and built by people you never speak to. That isn't always bad, but you should know before you sign. Ask who will design the site, who will build it and who you'll call when something breaks in eighteen months.
Then ask how meetings work. Being local means kickoffs, workshops and reviews can happen around one table, with the whiteboard and the printouts. We're based in Salt Lake City, so we meet in person, and if a video call is easier, we do that too. What matters is that you're talking to the people doing the work, not relaying messages through a project manager.
