Search "web design Lincoln NE" and you get a page of agencies that all say roughly the same thing: modern, responsive, results-driven, call us for a quote. None of it tells you who to hire. I build websites in Lincoln and I also shoot the photography that goes on them, so I sit through a lot of "we got burned by our last web guy" conversations, and the burns are weirdly consistent. They almost all trace back to a question nobody asked before signing. Here are the ten I'd ask anyone, including me.
1. Who owns the website when we're done?
This is the one that ruins people. Ask where the domain is registered and in whose name, who holds the hosting login, and whether you get the actual source code or just a login to a platform. If the designer registers the domain under their own account, or the site only exists inside a subscription you're paying them monthly for, you don't own a website — you're renting one, and the rent goes up the day you try to leave. The right answer is: domain in your name, hosting in your name, code in a repository you can hand to anyone.
2. Can I open your own site on my phone right now?
Do it in the parking lot before the meeting. If a web designer's own homepage takes four seconds to show anything on a phone, that is the level of care your site will get. Then open two sites from their portfolio the same way. Slow, clunky, or oddly identical to each other tells you everything the sales page won't.
3. What will my site score on Google's mobile speed test?
Google measures how fast a page loads and responds on a real phone — it calls the numbers Core Web Vitals — and uses them as a ranking signal. A designer who builds with performance in mind can give you a number they aim for. A designer who has never been asked will change the subject. Page builders and plugin-heavy WordPress installs tend to score badly here no matter how nice the design is, because the platform ships megabytes of its own code before your content appears. That is the main reason I build in Next.js: the pages are pre-built, so they load nearly instantly.
4. What is the price, and what exactly is in it?
A fair Lincoln web quote is a short list you can read. Mine says: starter sites from $1,200 for a five-page custom build, e-commerce with Shopify or Stripe from $4,500, and every line item on the page before you commit. If a vendor can't tell you a starting price until after a discovery call, they're pricing the client, not the work. And read the "what's included" line for the four things that are usually missing — content, photography, SEO basics, and a delivery date — because each of those becomes a change order later. I wrote up the whole market range, DIY through agency, in what a website actually costs in Lincoln.
5. Who writes the words, and who takes the photos?
If the quote is silent on this, the answer is you, and it's why so many Lincoln sites launch with "Welcome to our website" still on the homepage six months in. Stock photography is the other silent default, and customers can tell — a Lincoln business with stock photos of a smiling team in an office in nowhere-in-particular looks like a business that might not exist. Ask whether real photography is scoped into the build. In my case it is, because I shoot it: headshots from $200 and half-day commercial shoots from $600 go on the same quote as the site.
6. What happens in the ten minutes after a lead comes in?
A website's only real job is to produce an enquiry, and most of the value is lost right after that, when the enquiry sits in an inbox until Tuesday. Ask how the form, the quote request, or the booking button connects to the way you actually run the business. If the answer is "it emails you," you'll be copying leads into a spreadsheet forever. For service businesses I connect the site to Nvar Systems, the back-office platform I built to run my own studio — enquiries land in a pipeline, bookings take a deposit, proposals get accepted online, and invoices collect through Stripe. You don't need it to hire me for a site, but you should ask every designer what their version of that answer is.
7. What is the delivery date, and is it in the contract?
"About six to eight weeks" is not a delivery date. Ask for the date in writing and ask what you have to deliver by when for it to hold — because the number one cause of a late website is content the client hasn't sent. A good designer will hand you a short list on day one of exactly what they need from you. My starter builds run on a two-week schedule from the day content and photography are in hand, and that date goes in the contract.
8. What do I pay after launch?
Get the recurring costs on paper: hosting, "maintenance," plugin licenses, SSL, the CMS subscription. A lot of Lincoln quotes hide a monthly line item that is really marked-up commodity hosting plus updates the platform made necessary in the first place. Custom code on modern hosting has almost none of that — a typical small-business site costs little to nothing to host, and there are no plugins to babysit. If you do want someone updating copy and photos every month, that should be a separate, optional line you can cancel, not a condition of keeping your site online.
9. What SEO is actually built in?
Not "we do SEO." Specifically: per-page titles and descriptions, clean URLs, an XML sitemap, structured data, Google Search Console verified in your account, and mobile performance. Those are carpentry — they should be in every build at no extra charge. Ongoing SEO, meaning content and local rankings over months, is a legitimate separate service; just make sure the fundamentals aren't being sold back to you as a package.
10. What happens if you disappear?
Designers move, close, or stop answering. Ask what you'd be holding if that happened tomorrow. The answer should be: the repository, the accounts, a short written guide to updating the site, and a build any competent developer could pick up. If the honest answer is "you'd need to start over," that is the whole risk in one sentence.
The pattern behind all ten
Every one of these questions is really the same question: are you buying a website, or are you buying a relationship you can't leave? A good Lincoln web designer is happy to answer all ten because the answers are the pitch. If you want mine in one place — what's included, how the build runs, the two-week schedule, the published prices, and the sites you can open on your phone to check my own homework — it's all on the Lincoln web design page. Web is one lane of how we partner with businesses; if the site needs feeding after launch, that is the social media content engine. Or skip the reading and book a free 30-minute scope call; bring the quotes you already have and I'll tell you what's fair and what's padding, even if you don't hire me.
