Web Design

How to Evaluate a Web Design Agency in Pakistan: 12 Questions Most Buyers Do Not Ask

By Zain Ul Abideen · · 8 min read

We get hired to fix broken website builds about as often as we get hired to build new sites. The pattern is depressingly consistent: a Pakistani business owner hired the cheapest quote, ended up with a templated WordPress site that does not convert, cannot be edited, and breaks every time a plugin updates. Six months and PKR 200,000 later, they call us to start over. This guide is meant to help you skip that step.

Below are 12 questions that, if you ask them before signing, will filter out 80% of the agencies that will waste your money. They are not technical questions — they are sales conversation questions, and the answers tell you almost everything you need to know.

1. “Can you show me three live sites you built, in this industry, that I can call the client about?”

Notice what this question actually asks. Not “show me your portfolio” (which can be mockups, dead URLs, or sites where the agency only did a logo). It asks for live sites, in your industry, with reachable clients. An agency that cannot produce this for the work they claim to do is either new (which is fine if priced accordingly), or padding their portfolio (which is not fine at any price).

If they hesitate or pivot to “but here’s our process”, that is the answer.

2. “Who specifically writes the code? Are they a permanent employee or a freelancer?”

Many Pakistani “agencies” are essentially sales fronts that subcontract the actual work to a rotating cast of freelancers, often via Fiverr or Upwork. This can work — but the agency needs to be transparent about it, and you should know who is actually building your site, because that person owns your project quality.

A reasonable answer: “We have 4 in-house developers and use 2 vetted freelancers for specific specialities like motion design. Your project will be led by [Name], a senior dev who has been with us 3 years.” An unreasonable answer: vague reassurances about “our team”.

3. “What platform will you build on, and why that one for my project specifically?”

This is the single most informative question. A competent agency will answer with specifics: “WordPress with a custom theme because your content team needs to edit pages without a developer, and your traffic does not yet require headless performance” or “Shopify Plus because you sell direct-to-consumer and need inventory sync with your POS.” A weak agency will answer with whatever they always use — “we recommend WordPress for all our clients” — which means they have a single hammer and your project is the nail.

The right platform for a Pakistani brochure site is rarely the same as the right platform for an e-commerce store or a SaaS marketing site. If your agency does not differentiate, find another agency.

4. “What is your standard Core Web Vitals target, and how will you prove you hit it?”

This question reveals whether the agency builds for performance or for screenshots. The right answer mentions specific metrics — Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5s, Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1, Interaction to Next Paint under 200ms — and the testing methodology — Lighthouse scores from PageSpeed Insights, real-device testing on throttled 4G, not just localhost.

For Pakistani users specifically, this matters more than in most markets. The median Pakistani user is on a mid-range Android (Infinix, Tecno, Vivo, Xiaomi) on patchy 4G. A site that scores 95 on a developer’s MacBook on broadband can score 35 on a real Pakistani user’s device. We test on actual hardware before sign-off.

5. “Where will my site be hosted? Can you recommend hosting based on my audience location?”

Hosting is one of the highest-impact decisions for site performance, and many Pakistani agencies treat it as an afterthought. International hosting (US-based shared hosting from Namecheap or HostGator) adds 200–400ms of latency to every page load for Pakistani visitors. That latency directly affects Core Web Vitals, conversion rate, and bounce rate.

Good answers: LiteSpeed-tuned WordPress hosting with Karachi or Mumbai edge nodes; Cloudflare in front of a US/Singapore origin; managed hosting on Kinsta or WP Engine with the closest region selected. Bad answer: silence, or “we just use what you already have”.

6. “Will the site be accessible (WCAG 2.1 AA)?”

Accessibility is not just a moral question, though that should be enough. It is also a legal question in many of the international markets Pakistani businesses sell into (UK, EU, US), a SEO question (Google rewards accessible sites), and a conversion question (accessible sites have lower bounce rates and higher engagement).

A serious agency builds for WCAG 2.1 AA by default — semantic HTML, proper colour contrast, keyboard navigation, screen-reader-friendly markup, alt text on every image. Asking the question forces the conversation; if the answer is blank, you know the level of craft you are buying.

7. “How will conversion tracking and analytics be set up?”

A website that does not measure what it does is a website you cannot improve. Setting up GA4, Google Tag Manager, conversion events, and integration with your CRM (if applicable) takes 6–10 hours of focused work and should be included in the build, not as an extra. If the agency does not raise this without prompting, they are building you a brochure, not a marketing asset.

8. “What is included in the post-launch period, and what will I pay separately?”

This is where contract scope-creep happens. Common gotchas: “design revisions after launch are charged hourly”, “minor content updates are PKR 5,000 per change”, “we discovered the homepage hero needs a different image format and that is an add-on”.

Get the scope of post-launch work in writing: how many rounds of revision after launch, what counts as a “minor edit” vs. “new feature work”, what hourly rate applies for out-of-scope work. A trustworthy agency includes 30–60 days of bug-fix and minor-edit support in the base project fee.

9. “Who owns the code, design files, and accounts after launch?”

You. The answer should be “you, with full handover on final payment”. This includes: the WordPress admin password (not just a contributor role), the GitHub repo with full code history, the hosting account access, the domain registrar access, the design source files (Figma, Adobe XD, whatever), and any image licenses purchased on your behalf.

Some Pakistani agencies use the design and hosting handover as a lock-in mechanism — “we keep the code on our private server” or “we host it on our shared account at cost”. Do not accept this. If you part ways in 18 months, you should walk away with everything any competent developer needs to take over the site without rebuilding it.

10. “How will the site handle Urdu, Arabic, or other RTL content if I need it later?”

Even if you launch in English-only, the right architecture supports adding Urdu later without a rebuild. A WordPress site with proper hreflang setup, multilingual plugin compatibility (WPML or Polylang), and correctly structured templates can add an Urdu version in a few weeks. A site built without that foresight needs to be rebuilt from scratch.

For Pakistani-targeted sites, this matters. Urdu-language SEO is an under-served opportunity (most competitors publish English-only), and adding an Urdu version 18 months after launch is often the highest-ROI content investment you can make. Build for that future on day one.

11. “How will you integrate with JazzCash, Easypaisa, or local payment gateways if I need e-commerce later?”

If there is any chance of e-commerce in the next 24 months, ask now. Pakistani payment gateway integration (JazzCash, Easypaisa, NayaPay, HBL Konnect, plus international gateways like Stripe and PayFast) is not plug-and-play. Each has different SDKs, different webhook patterns, different testing environments, and different settlement workflows. An agency that has shipped 5+ Pakistani e-commerce stores will answer this differently from one that has shipped two.

12. “Can I see your latest 30-day support response time average?”

After launch is where most agency relationships break down. The site goes live, the project team disbands, and any subsequent request — a content update, a bug fix, a small new feature — sits in a queue for two weeks. By month four you are looking for someone else.

Ask for actual metrics: average first-response time, average resolution time for bug fixes, average resolution time for feature requests. If they do not measure this, they will not deliver on it. If they do measure and the numbers are bad, at least they are honest. If they refuse to share, you know what you are buying.

What the answers add up to

You are not interviewing developers for code quality — that is impossible without a technical co-founder. You are interviewing them for honesty, transparency, and operational discipline. The 12 questions above filter for that. An agency that answers them straightforwardly, with specifics, and is comfortable saying “no” or “we are not the right fit for this” is dramatically more likely to ship you a site that does what you need.

If you want a free 30-minute review of your existing website or a competitive landscape audit before talking to anyone about a rebuild, get in touch. Our web design service page has the typical scope, timelines, and pricing for the work we do. The 212 Google reviews are public and we encourage you to read them.

Most importantly, do not hire on price alone. The cheapest agency is not the most expensive mistake — that is the second-cheapest agency, the one that almost worked.

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