Most Nottingham businesses do not need another mood board. They need a way to tell a competent-looking quote from a site that will still work in two years. The questions below are the ones I would ask if I were hiring, and the ones I answer on a first call.
I am Harry Ashton. Hashton Agency is a Nottinghamshire studio. I build the site. There is no account manager between us. If a question below makes a salesperson uncomfortable, that is useful data. Hire the person who will answer it in writing.
Nottingham Contemporary and the Arkwright Building. Photo: Max W / Pexels.
Who is actually building it
Ask for a name, not a studio adjective. “Our talented team” often means a junior after the pitch. Ask who writes the HTML, who sets the hosting, and who you email when a form breaks on a Thursday.
Ask whether they subcontract. If the person on the call cannot open the repo, they are not the builder.
Ask to see production work with URLs you can fetch. Not a PDF. Not a Behance crop. A live page. My list is on proof. It is employment and product work — EO Charging, Thrive Learning, CodePrepped — not a wall of city-centre shopfronts. I will not pretend otherwise. You should not accept pretend from anyone else either.
What you will own when they leave
Ask who owns the domain, the DNS, the repo, the CMS, and the design files. If the answer is “we host it for you” without an export path, you are renting a brochure.
Ask what happens if you stop paying a retainer. A site that dies when the subscription dies is not an asset. It is a lease.
Ask whether the stack is something another engineer can take over. Proprietary page builders with no export, Wix locked to Wix, WordPress themes that only one freelancer understands — those are switching costs dressed as convenience. I build custom code by default, typically Next.js, so the result is a codebase you can hand to someone else. That is in services. It is also why I will tell you if a template is enough for now.
How they talk about search
Anyone can say they “do SEO”. Ask what ships in the build.
You want: one honest host, canonicals that match the redirect, a sitemap of real URLs, titles that match the H1, semantic HTML, and pages for the services you want to rank for. You do not want a promise to “get you on page one” with no mechanism.
I wrote the short version in If it has no URL, search cannot find it and the local version in Website design in Nottingham: what actually gets you found. If a designer has never thought about crawlable case studies or mixed www / apex hosts, they are decorating, not publishing.
Ask whether they will invent a street or a phone for schema. Missing NAP is better than fake NAP. I will not publish a number I do not answer or a street I do not occupy.
Ask about Core Web Vitals as a customer problem, not a trophy. Nottingham traffic is phones outside Broadmarsh, not a Lighthouse screenshot in a deck.
Scope, time, and money without a fake price list
Ask what is in scope as a list of URLs, not a vibe. Homepage, four services, a proof index, contact, redirects from the old site — that is a job. “A modern refresh” is not.
Ask how they handle the current site. Redirects, keeping the domain, whether blog posts survive. A redesign that 404s every old service page is how you donate rankings to a competitor.
Ask about timeline as a ship date for a first usable version, not a twelve-week Gantt. I work in weeks. If someone needs a quarter to launch a brochure, ask what the other eleven weeks are for.
Ask how they price. I work fixed-price for a clearly scoped website. Flexible or milestone-based when the product is still moving. I will not put a number in this article I cannot honour on your URL. A designer who quotes a band without seeing the current site is guessing. A designer who refuses to discuss money at all is hiding. The honest middle is: send the domain, agree the pages, then a price.
Ask to see the actual pages, not a slide. Photo: Tranmautritam / Pexels.
After launch is part of the product
Ask who fixes a broken form. Ask how content gets updated — you, them, a CMS, or a ticket. Many Nottingham SMEs do not need a CMS. They need to change a contact block twice a year. Hardcoded pages are cheaper until they are not. I said the same on the homepage FAQ.
Ask whether analytics are installed so you can log in. A site nobody can measure is a poster.
Ask about accessibility as a build constraint: keyboard, contrast, labels, landmarks. WCAG AA is not a badge you buy later. It is how the HTML is written. If they have never tested with a keyboard, they have not tested.
Ask what “done” looks like. A URL on the host you chose, redirects from the old URLs, a sitemap that matches, and a contact path that works with JavaScript off. If their done is a Figma file, you have not bought a website.
East Midlands, not a location keyword dump
I am in Nottinghamshire. I work with Nottingham, Hucknall, Mansfield, Newark, Derby, Leicester, and remote clients. You do not need a designer on your industrial estate every Tuesday. You need someone who will look at the live URL and tell you the truth.
If the current site is a template Google cannot treat as a unique page, that is a Derby-shaped problem I wrote up separately as well as a Nottingham one. The Nottingham service page is the location URL. The questions below are what I expect you to bring to a booking or an email.
East Midlands businesses are warehouses and vans, not just a skyline. Photo: Altaf Shah / Pexels.
Questions Nottingham businesses actually ask
These are written as Q&A on purpose — short enough to reuse as FAQPage schema later, long enough to be an answer rather than a slogan.
How much does a website cost in Nottingham?
I work fixed-price once the scope is clear: pages, migrations, booking, CMS, and anything that talks to another system. I will not publish a band here I cannot honour on a real URL. Bring the current site to a call. I will tell you what I would actually build, what I would skip, and what that job costs.
How long does a small-business site take?
Most brochure sites I take on ship in weeks, not quarters, because the scope is a list of URLs rather than a wishlist. Migrations, booking, or an app take longer. I would rather cut pages and launch than keep you in decks. You will see a host and a working contact path before anyone talks about phase two.
Will a new website rank on Google?
Technical SEO ships with the build: semantic HTML, metadata, one host, a sitemap of real URLs, and pages for the services you want found. Rankings still depend on the query, the competition, and whether the copy is unique. I will not promise page one. I will promise the site is a set of documents Google can fetch.
Should I use Wix, WordPress, or custom code?
Use a template if you need a presence soon and accept the limits. Use WordPress if you already live in it. Use custom code when you care about performance, ownership, and URLs you can still edit in two years. I default to custom. I will also tell you when that is more than you need.
Do I own the website when it is finished?
You should own the domain, DNS, repository, and content. Hosting can be in your account or mine; either way you need an export path. If a designer keeps the only login, you do not own a site. You have a subscription with a pretty front. I hand over the repo and the records. That is the job.
Who will I actually speak to?
Me. Harry Ashton. There is no junior after the pitch and no project manager relaying messages. If you want a large agency with account managers, hire one — the Nottingham market has them. If you want the engineer who ships it, that is the point of Hashton.
Can you take over my existing Wix or WordPress site?
Yes, as a rebuild or a rescue, depending on what is worth keeping. I will not skin a broken IA in a new theme and call it done. We look at which URLs have equity, which copy is unique, and which pages should exist. Then we redirect the old addresses so you do not donate the history.
Do I need a CMS?
Only if you need to edit content often without me. A five-page marketing site is faster and cheaper as real pages until that need shows up. If you do need a CMS, I pick the lightest fit for your workflow, not a platform for its own sake. A CMS that nobody logs into is just another moving part.
Is SEO included?
Technical SEO is included: crawlable structure, titles, performance, accessibility, indexing hygiene. Broader keyword programmes and content calendars are a different scope. If someone sells you “SEO” as a monthly mystery, ask which URLs they will publish. Search still needs pages. I wrote that up in If it has no URL.
What happens after launch if something breaks?
I do not disappear when the invoice clears. A form, a certificate, a redirect — those are ordinary. Ongoing work is agreed, not assumed. You will know whether a change is a quick fix or a new page. The site should be something you can log into, measure, and hand to another engineer if you ever need to.
Do you only work in Nottingham city centre?
No. Nottinghamshire is the base. Derby, Leicester, Mansfield, Newark, and the rest of the East Midlands are in the service area, plus remote when the work is software. Location pages should name the places you actually serve. Mine is website design in Nottingham. Yours should not be a keyword dump with a stock castle.
What should I bring to the first call?
The current URL, the three services you most need to be found for, and anyone who has to approve copy. If you have Search Console, even better. I will tell you which pages are missing, which hosts fight, and whether a template is still doing the job. Book a slot or email the domain. Bring the messy version.