Start with the job the website has to do
Chilliwack businesses are a varied mix: trades working out of Sardis and Promontory, farm suppliers around Greendale, clinics, cafes near Five Corners and tourism operators serving visitors to Rosedale and Cultus Lake. A site for a farm stand is not a site for a plumber. Write down the one action each visitor should take, whether that is calling, booking, asking for a quote or driving to you.
Take that one-line goal into every conversation. A designer who opens by asking about your customers, your busy season and how leads reach you today is doing the right work. One who opens with colour palettes and templates is selling something else. Bring two or three sites you admire and say why, because taste is easier to match when it is concrete.
Ask how the work actually runs
Process is where small projects go wrong, so ask for it in writing. You want to hear about a discovery stage, a content stage, a draft you can react to, the build, testing and a launch plan. Ask who writes the text and who sources the photos. Vague answers about being flexible usually mean surprise costs later.
Ask who you will deal with day to day. One account lead from start to finish is a sensible setup, and it is how we work at All In One Marketing Pro, with design, build and content produced in-house. With an office in Chilliwack and our studio in Abbotsford, meetings can happen by phone, by video or in person at the studio.
- What happens in the first two weeks?
- How many rounds of changes are included?
- Who edits the page text, and who supplies photos?
- Who is my contact from kickoff to launch?
- What is the launch date, and what could delay it?
Ask who owns what
Ownership is the question people forget until they want to leave. The domain name should be registered in your name or your company's, with you as the administrator. You should receive logins for hosting, analytics and your Google profile. Ask whether design files, images and text transfer to you at the end, and what licences cover the fonts and any paid plugins.
Then ask what happens after launch. Sites need updates, backups and security patches, and somebody has to be responsible for them. A clear monthly care plan is fine. A site you cannot move without paying a release fee is a trap. Agree on all of this in the contract, in plain words, before work starts.
Check mobile speed and local search for yourself
Open the designer's recent sites on your own phone, using mobile data instead of Wi-Fi. Does the page appear quickly? Can you tap the phone number? Is the text readable without pinching? Many local searches happen on a phone, often in a truck or a parking lot, and slow pages lose those visitors. Run a free speed test on a few samples and ask how images are kept light.
Then ask about local search. Many Sardis residents never type the word Chilliwack, so a sound plan names the neighbourhoods, builds a page for each real service and keeps the address, hours and phone number matching your Google Business Profile. Ask how page titles, headings and call tracking are set up, so you can see results after launch.
Red flags to walk away from
Be wary of anyone who promises first-page results by a date, will not show real work, or cannot name who will build your site. Cheap templated sites that look identical across a dozen businesses tend to fail on both originality and speed. Watch for pressure, too: a discount that expires tonight is a sales trick, not a design principle.
Ask for references you can phone, and for the numbers behind any claim. We have no published client case study in Chilliwack yet, so we show Fraser Valley work from Abbotsford and let you judge the fit. Any honest designer should be able to say the same about the gaps in their own portfolio.
- Rankings promised by a certain date
- No named person who will build your site
- A contract that keeps the domain or hosting in their name
- No mobile examples you can test
- Pressure to sign today
A site for people and for AI summaries
A Chilliwack website now has two audiences: the people who visit, and the AI tools that summarize pages for them. Clear headings, straight answers to common questions and accurate business details help both. Ask any designer how pages are structured for search and answer engines, and whether tracking is built in, so the site keeps improving after launch.
- 01Pages written to answer questions directly
- 02Business details that stay consistent across the web
- 03Speed and conversion tuning that continues after launch
Questions & answers
It depends on the number of pages, custom features and who writes the content. A quote that lists what is included is more useful than one figure. Our projects start from $1,000, and hourly work runs $50 to $99 per hour, so you can compare a clear scope against a clear price.
Being nearby helps with meetings and local knowledge, but it matters less than process and ownership. What counts is whether they understand your customers and the neighbourhoods you serve. We have an office in Chilliwack and a studio in Abbotsford, and we also work comfortably by phone and video.
A small site often takes several weeks from first call to launch, and the biggest delay is usually waiting for text and photos. Ask for a dated plan and agree who supplies what by when. Larger sites with bookings or online sales take longer to build and test.
If the site loads fast on a phone, shows your services clearly and you control the logins, it may only need new pages and tracking. If it is slow, hard to edit or tied to a platform you cannot leave, a rebuild is usually cheaper than patching. A free marketing audit can tell you which.