Our advice is to choose a web designer on evidence you can check, not on claims you are asked to accept. Almost every provider will say their work is professional, their communication is good and their prices are fair. Those statements cannot be compared. What can be compared is whether the designer can show work like yours, states who will actually do the work, puts ownership and support in writing, and tells you what is not included.
This guide is the set of questions worth asking any web designer in Ghana, including us, and the specific answers to ask for. It is written for a business owner who needs a website that works rather than a portfolio presentation.
A word on scope. Several guides in Ghana list agencies by name. That is a different job from this one. If you are trying to shortlist providers by name, a listing will help you. If you have one or two quotations and want to judge them properly, use the method here, together with our guide to what a website costs in Ghana.
Why choosing feels harder than it should
Most providers describe themselves in the same terms, because the terms are not specific. “Responsive design”, “SEO friendly” and “clean modern design” can each mean a very different amount of work, and the words themselves tell you almost nothing about what you will receive.
What separates a good choice from a poor one is rarely the quality of the conversation. It is whether the designer answers a direct question, in writing, in a way you could hold them to.
A bakery owner in Takoradi needs a product catalogue and a way to take orders. A clinic in Kumasi needs enquiries that arrive with the service and the patient’s preferred contact method already attached. A contractor needs enquiries separated by service area. Each of these is a small, checkable requirement. Each one should appear in a quotation as something specific, and its absence is informative.
Send the same brief to everyone
Before comparing anything, write one short brief and send the identical version to each provider: what your business does, the pages you need named one by one, whether you sell online or take bookings, what content you already have ready, and what you need to own at the end. Send the same brief to all of them and the answers become comparable. Send different briefs and you will be comparing different projects.
The questions that separate providers who can do the job
Is the work relevant to my sector?
Ask for finished sites in a sector close to yours, not the most attractive examples. A site for a law firm, a restaurant and an online store share little beyond having a website, and the one closest to your own is the better predictor. Ask what problem each piece of work solved and what the designer would do differently now. A designer who can answer that has judged their own work rather than simply displayed it.
Who designs it, who builds it, and who do I deal with?
Some studios are one person. Some are designers who pass the build to a separate developer. Both are workable. What matters is that you know which, and that you know the name of the person who is responsible for your project. Ask who will be your point of contact from first conversation to launch. If the answer is only a company name, ask for the person’s name and what happens to your project if they are unavailable.
What questions are they asking you?
A provider who asks about your customers, your competitors, your existing website and who writes the copy is working out what you need. A provider who quotes from three sentences is not. This is one of the most reliable signals available before you have paid anything, and it costs nothing to observe.
What will they not commit to?
We recommend asking what is excluded. A provider who can name their exclusions plainly is telling you how their price is built. Most projects go wrong not through bad faith but through an assumption nobody wrote down, so treat an answer of “everything is included” as a question that still needs asking. Ask specifically about writing the copy, preparing photographs, setting up the domain, and anything to do with payments after launch.
Ownership, access and handover
Three separate questions, often answered as one. The domain is a registration: ask whether it will be registered in your name or your organisation’s account, and whether you can transfer it if you later leave. Hosting is where your site is served from: ask who holds that account, what access you receive, whether it is shared, and what the renewal dates and running costs are, since some hosting is provided as part of a service rather than as an account in your name. Handover is what you can do afterwards: ask what you receive, what documentation comes with it, and whether someone on your team can add a page or publish an update without raising a request.
If the answer is that your team will not be able to edit the site, that is workable but it has a cost you should price now: every small change becomes someone else’s task.
Support, maintenance and new work are three different things
Providers often bundle them under the word “support”. They are worth separating, because they are priced differently and they run out at different times.
- Warranty — correcting faults in what was delivered, within an agreed period
- Maintenance — keeping the site updated, backed up, secure and stable
- Support — answering your questions and helping you use the site
- New work — a page, feature or integration asked for after the scope was agreed
We recommend asking which of these are included, for how long, through which channel, and what happens when the included period ends. Maintenance rarely covers unlimited redesign or entering content on your behalf, and it is fair to expect that to be stated rather than discovered later.
Price structure and payment stages
Our advice is to ask how the price is arrived at: a fixed figure for a stated scope, or an estimate that moves with time. If it is time-based, ask what the estimate covers, how time is reported and whether there is a limit you agree in advance. Also ask what each payment confirms and what happens if the project pauses partway.
A final payment due before launch or handover means the last part of the money is released when there is a finished website in front of you, rather than earlier on a promise.
Timeline, and what it actually depends on
Ask for a schedule in writing, and ask what the provider needs from you and by when. Most delays come from content arriving late rather than from building. A designer who tells you the schedule assumes your content is ready, and who will tell you if it slips, has understood how the work actually runs. If a date is driving your decision, say so and ask what it is tied to.
A question checklist to send any provider
Work down this list with every provider you are considering. Send the same questions to all of them so the answers line up. Every third column is a question to send in writing.
| What to establish | What to ask | If the answer is missing |
|---|---|---|
| Relevant work | Finished sites in a sector like mine, and what they would do differently | Ask for two, and what problem each one solved |
| The people | Who designs, who builds, who is my point of contact | Ask for a name, not a company |
| Discovery | What questions did you ask me before quoting? | Few or no questions suggests a quote from assumptions |
| Scope | Pages by name, layouts counted, and what is excluded | Unconfirmed, so treat it as neither included nor excluded |
| Content | Who writes it, who supplies images, who enters it, by when | Assume it is your job until it is confirmed otherwise |
| Revisions | How many rounds, and what counts as one round | One round, defined by them |
| Ownership | Will the domain be registered in my name? | Ask whether you can transfer it later |
| Hosting | Who holds the account, what access, renewal dates and cost | Expect a separate conversation and a separate bill |
| Handover | What do I receive, and can my team edit the site? | Every small change becomes a request |
| Support | What is covered, for how long, through which channel | Nothing after launch, or fault-fixing you report |
| New work | How is work after approval quoted and priced | Billed at a rate you have not agreed |
| Schedule | Dates in writing, and what you owe them and when | A target rather than a commitment |
Signs worth pausing over
None of these prove a provider is unsuitable. They mean a question has not been answered yet, and it is reasonable to ask before you commit.
- A quotation arrives before any questions about your business
- Everything is included, and nothing is listed as excluded
- Search performance or a specific ranking is promised as a deliverable
- There is no answer on what happens to the domain at the end
- The full amount is requested before any work is finished, with nothing to approve
- Revisions are unlimited in principle, with no definition of a round
- Support after launch is described without a period or a channel
If you are short on time
You do not need every question answered perfectly before you start. Four things are worth settling before you pay anything, because they are difficult to change afterwards: who owns the domain, what is included, who does the work, and when the final payment falls due. The rest can be agreed in the written scope as the project runs.
How Sobiaonline answers these
Since you may be comparing us against other providers, here is where we stand on each point, so you can hold us to the same standard.
- Relevant work — our portfolio shows Ghanaian business and organisation websites. Ask us what problem each one solved; that is a fair test.
- The people — clients work directly with the person responsible for understanding and delivering their website.
- Scope — final scope, deliverables and timelines are confirmed in writing before work begins. Our packages state page counts and features; corporate and membership builds are quoted on scope.
- Ownership — domain and hosting are registered in your name, so you keep ownership and control. They are not sold to you as a separate package, and renewal dates and recurring costs are explained before work begins.
- Payment — Sobiaonline offers flexible payment options through bank cards and mobile money across various networks. Pay 60% to begin your project and the remaining 40% before launch or handover.
- After launch — six months of technical maintenance is included, covering software updates within the agreed scope, routine backups, security monitoring and correction of technical faults within the agreed scope. That is not unlimited redesign and not ongoing content entry; ongoing content support is arranged separately and we tell you what it costs.
- What we do not promise — we do not promise a search ranking. Search engines decide the order, not the build.
Our full service detail is on the web design services page, and the reasoning behind each package is in what a website costs in Ghana. If any answer above is unclear, ask us the same way you would ask anyone else.
Frequently asked questions
How many web designers should I contact in Ghana?
Two or three is usually enough. What matters more than the number is that each provider answers the same written brief, so you are comparing answers to one question rather than three different projects.
Should I choose the cheapest designer?
Not on the headline figure alone. A lower price can reflect a genuinely smaller scope that suits you well. It becomes a problem when necessary work is unconfirmed rather than stated as excluded, because you may end up arranging and paying for it separately. Compare what is confirmed, not what is assumed.
Can I judge a web designer’s work from their website alone?
Only partly. A well-built site tells you they can build one. It does not tell you whether they ask questions before starting, whether they put scope in writing, or how they hand a project over. Ask those directly rather than inferring them from the design.
What should be in writing before I start?
The scope, the deliverables, the timeline, the price, the payment stages, what is excluded, and who is responsible for content. For a Sobiaonline project these are confirmed in writing before work begins, and we would encourage you to ask any provider for the same.
If you would like a quotation with the scope written down before any work begins, tell us what your business does, which pages and functions you know you need, and who will prepare the content. You can send that through our contact page.
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