How to Choose a Web Design Company in Palm Beach County

Verify the company on Sunbiz first

Search the company on Sunbiz, the Florida Division of Corporations site, before the first meeting. It is the state's official business entity index. You can search by name, by officer or registered agent, or by document number, and it also lists fictitious names, which is how many agencies trade.

A two-minute search tells you whether the entity exists, whether its status is active, who its officers are and what address it files under. If the agency trades under a brand name, search the fictitious name records too and confirm who owns it. The name on your contract should match an entity you can find.

The Palm Beach County Tax Collector also states that any person selling merchandise or services in the county must have a local business tax receipt, including home-based businesses. It is reasonable to ask a local firm for theirs. A company based elsewhere will have the equivalent from its own state or county.

Who will own the domain and the accounts

You should. ICANN describes the registrant as the person or entity that holds the rights to a domain name, and warns that a developer hired to manage a domain may have registered it with their own contact details. Insist the domain sits in your registrar account under your company's name.

ICANN's guidance goes further: if a third party registered the name, you may need proof of payment to show your registrar that you are the rightful holder. That is a dispute nobody wants during a vendor breakup. Its registrant rights document also makes you responsible for keeping contact details accurate and payment information current, which you cannot do for an account you cannot log in to.

Apply the same rule to everything else: hosting, analytics, Search Console, the Google Business Profile, the email platform and any ad accounts. The business owns each one. The agency is added as a user and can be removed in a minute.

• Domain registrar account, in the company's name
• Hosting and deployment accounts
• Analytics and Search Console properties
• Google Business Profile ownership
• Email, CRM and form tools
• Source code and design files, with a written transfer

Who actually writes the words

Ask this before anything about design. Many website quotes assume the client supplies finished copy, and most clients never do, so the launch stalls or the site goes live with filler. Find out whether writing is included, who does it, how they learn your business and how many rounds of edits are covered.

The words do most of the selling and most of the ranking. A firm that designs first and asks for text later is building a container. A firm that interviews you, drafts the pages and then designs around what needs to be said is building a sales tool. Ask to see a page they wrote, not only pages they designed.

How leads will reach you

Have the company show you exactly where a form submission goes, who gets it, how fast and what happens if the email fails. A website that looks right and drops inquiries is worse than an ugly one that delivers them. Ask about call tracking, spam filtering and a record of every submission.

• Which inbox or CRM each form delivers to, and who can change it
• Whether submissions are also stored somewhere in case an email bounces
• How phone calls from the site are counted
• What spam protection is used and whether it blocks real people
• Whether you get a test submission report before launch
• Who is alerted if a form stops working

What happens to your old site in a redesign

Ask for the redirect plan in writing. Google's own documentation on site moves tells owners to map old URLs to new ones, use permanent redirects, avoid redirect chains and keep the redirects in place for as long as possible, generally at least a year. A company that cannot describe this will cost you traffic.

This is the single most common way a redesign damages a business. The new site launches, the old addresses stop working, and the pages that had earned search traffic for years return errors. Ask who builds the URL map, who tests it on launch day and who watches Search Console afterward.

How they handle accessibility

Ask which standard they build to and how they test. The Department of Justice says the ADA applies to the websites of businesses open to the public, and it points to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines as existing technical guidance. A credible answer names WCAG and describes manual testing, not only a scanner.

Be cautious if the answer is a widget. The Federal Trade Commission ordered one overlay vendor to pay $1 million over claims that its automated tool could make any site meet WCAG. Accessibility is built into the design, the code and the content, then checked by a person using a keyboard and a screen reader.

What to ask about life after launch

Get the post-launch arrangement in writing: who hosts the site, who applies updates, how fast a broken form gets fixed, what a small change costs and how you leave if you want to. The best time to agree on the exit is before you sign, while everyone is still friendly.

Then check references properly. Ask a past client what went wrong during the project and how the firm handled it, whether the launch date held, and whether they can edit the site themselves today. Ask whether the people in the pitch were the people who did the work. In a county where a lot of business still moves by referral, a firm with nothing to hide will hand over names without hesitation.

• Hosting and care plan terms, with the monthly scope spelled out
• Response time for something broken versus something requested
• Whether your team can edit pages without a developer
• Who holds backups and how a restore works
• The handover process if you move to another vendor