Start with the questions they ask you
A serious discovery conversation should cover your customer, offer, current channels, strongest proof, main conversion, content, languages, operational limits, deadline, ownership, and how success will be measured. If the conversation jumps directly to colors and page count, the business problem is still undefined.
Review proof, not adjectives
Look beyond claims such as modern, premium, fast, or best. Open the live work on a real phone. Check whether the offer is understandable, the primary action is obvious, Arabic behaves correctly, pages load without friction, and forms or WhatsApp flows actually complete.
A useful case study explains the business context, challenge, decisions, and outcome honestly. Be cautious with impressive percentages that have no baseline, measurement period, or verifiable source.
Use a twelve-point comparison
Score every shortlisted company against the same criteria. This prevents a polished presentation from hiding a weak delivery model.
Checklist
- Business diagnosis before design
- Relevant live work and honest case studies
- Mobile-first customer journey
- Native Arabic and right-to-left quality
- Clear content responsibilities
- Accessibility and usability
- Performance and technical quality
- SEO foundations and indexability
- Analytics and conversion tracking
- Security, backups, and update process
- Domain, account, design, and source ownership
- Defined launch, support, and maintenance terms
Red flags to resolve before paying
Resolve vague deliverables, copied portfolio work, guaranteed Google rankings, unclear ownership, full payment without milestones, missing mobile or Arabic review, no written exclusions, reliance on unlicensed assets, and promises that depend on content nobody has agreed to create.
A red flag is a reason to ask for evidence or clarification, not automatically a reason to reject. The response tells you how the relationship will work when a real problem appears.
What a clear proposal should contain
The proposal should identify the objective, audience, pages, features, languages, deliverables, client inputs, exclusions, milestones, review rounds, launch tasks, ownership, third-party costs, support period, maintenance options, payment schedule, and change process.
Choose the team whose scope you understand and whose decisions connect to your customer journey—not simply the team with the most pages in its proposal.