I run an agency, so you might expect a long explanation of why everybody needs one.

They don't.

A good freelancer, an internal team or a straightforward platform can be the right answer. It depends on the work and how much of it you can manage yourself. An agency needs to justify its place by bringing the skills together and taking responsibility for the result.

That's what I'd look for before worrying about the name above the door.

Who is going to join the work up?

Say you have a designer, a developer and somebody helping with the copy. All good people. But who explains the business to them? Who decides how the message affects the layout? Who notices when something promised in the design hasn't made it into the build?

When nobody owns those connections, the client ends up carrying them. You're forwarding feedback, explaining decisions again and trying to work out which person is responsible for the bit that's missing.

A good agency should reduce that job, not simply add an account manager to the email chain.

At Awove, we bring the strategy, identity, design and development around the same project. The team building the website should understand why it looks and reads the way it does. You shouldn't have to keep explaining the thinking from scratch.

You should get an opinion

You're not hiring expertise just to hear “yes” more enthusiastically.

I'd expect a good team to question a request when it creates a problem, suggest a better way where there is one and explain the trade-offs. A competent answer might be “we can do that, but here's what it will change”.

That isn't permission for the agency to ignore you. You understand your customers, business and ambitions. The job is to bring that knowledge together with the team's skills and reach better decisions.

Be wary of both extremes: the supplier who agrees to everything without thinking, and the one who treats every client question as interference with the art.

Meet the people you'll actually work with

Who leads the project? Who designs and builds it? Who checks it? Will you be able to discuss the work with the people making it?

Ask to see relevant finished websites, then use them. Open them on your phone. Follow the navigation. Look beyond the attractive homepage capture in the sales deck.

A team that is excellent at a small brochure site isn't automatically the team for a complicated product catalogue. Find out how their experience relates to the job in front of you. Awards can be reassuring, but they don't answer that question on their own.

Read what the quote includes

Check the copy, design, development, revisions, testing and launch responsibilities. Find out what you must provide, which decisions need approval and what happens if the direction changes.

Do this while everybody is getting along. It's much easier than trying to establish the agreement halfway through an argument about whether something was included.

Ask how they test, how they handle a problem and who takes responsibility after launch. “It'll all work perfectly” is a reassuring sentence, but I'd rather know what happens when it doesn't.

Make sure you can use what you buy

The finished website needs to belong in the business's working life. Somebody should know how to edit it. Accounts and access need to be clear. Source files and documentation need an agreed home. Support for the delivered site needs to be distinguished from new development.

Find out what another supplier would need to take over. A healthy working relationship shouldn't depend on the client being unable to leave.

There's real value in a team that can understand the problem, make good recommendations and carry the work through. Judge the agency on those things, the finished work and the responsibilities it is willing to put in writing.

And if a smaller setup fits your needs better, choose it. Paying for an agency should solve something for you, not just make the purchase sound more important.