Choosing a digital marketing agency or web developer is a leap of faith for most small business owners. You're not a developer yourself, the portfolio looks impressive, and the sales pitch sounds convincing. But a polished portfolio and a confident pitch tell you almost nothing about whether the work will actually perform.
The good news is that you don't need to be technical to check. There are a handful of free, objective tests anyone can run in under 10 minutes that reveal more about an agency's actual competence than any case study or testimonial.
Why this matters more than you might think
We regularly audit South African business websites as part of our work, including sites built by other agencies. The pattern is consistent and surprising: agencies with beautiful portfolios, slick branding, and confident sales copy frequently deliver websites that score poorly on the technical fundamentals that actually drive results, Google rankings, page speed, and compliance.
A website that looks good in a screenshot but takes 14 seconds to load on mobile is not a good website. It's a liability that's actively costing the client enquiries every single day, whether they know it or not.
The five checks you can run yourself
1. Run their own site through PageSpeed Insights
Before hiring any agency, go to pagespeed.web.dev and test their website, not a client site from their portfolio, their own. If an agency cannot get their own site to perform well, there is little reason to believe they will do better for you.
Look at four numbers:
If any of these scores below 50, that's a serious red flag. We have tested agency websites scoring as low as 41 on performance, with load times stretching to 14 seconds on mobile, from agencies actively selling "high-performing" websites to clients.
2. Check if their own site is actually indexed properly
Type "site:theiragencydomain.co.za" into Google. Count how many pages appear. Then visit their website and count how many pages actually exist. If the numbers are wildly different, their own pages aren't being found by Google, a strange position for a company selling SEO services to be in.
3. Look for a Privacy Policy and cookie consent
Visit their site and check the footer for a Privacy Policy. If they have a contact form but no visible privacy policy, that's a POPIA compliance gap. An agency that doesn't handle this on their own site is unlikely to prioritise it on yours.
4. Ask to see Lighthouse scores from a recent client project
Don't take their word for it, ask directly: "Can you show me the Lighthouse score of a site you delivered in the last three months?" A competent developer or agency will have this readily available, because they check it as a matter of course before handing work over. Hesitation or a vague answer is worth noting.
5. Check how many third-party cookies their site sets
Open Chrome DevTools (right-click → Inspect → Application → Cookies) or simply look at the Best Practices section of their PageSpeed report. A site with 20, 30, or even 50+ third-party cookies and no visible consent banner indicates a lack of attention to compliance, again, concerning from a company that may be handling your data and your customers' data.
What good actually looks like
For context, here are the scores you should be aiming for, and what a properly built site can achieve. Our own site, groundworkdigital-za.co.za, currently scores 91+ on Performance, 100 on Accessibility, 100 on Best Practices, and 100 on SEO. These aren't difficult numbers to hit if performance and compliance are genuinely prioritised during the build, they require attention, not magic.
We publish these numbers because we believe a website agency should hold itself to the same standard it sells to clients. Any agency should be willing to show you theirs.
Questions worth asking before you sign
Beyond the technical checks, a few direct questions during a sales conversation reveal a lot:
"What platform do you build on, and why?" A clear, confident answer with reasoning is a good sign. A vague answer or immediate pivot to discussing design is worth noting.
"Will I own the code, or does it stay on your platform?" If your site lives entirely within a proprietary builder you can't export from, you are locked in. Make sure you understand what happens if you ever want to leave.
"What happens to my site's performance and SEO after launch?" Building a fast site once is different from keeping it fast and compliant over time. Ask whether ongoing monitoring is included or available separately.
"Can I see Search Console data from a site you've worked on, even anonymised?" This shows whether the agency actually tracks results, or simply hands over a site and disappears.
The bottom line
You don't need to understand code to evaluate whether a website agency knows what they're doing. The four free Lighthouse scores, the indexing check, and the privacy policy check together take less than 10 minutes and reveal more than any portfolio or sales call ever will.
Trust the data, not the pitch. Any agency confident in their work will welcome the scrutiny, and if they don't, that tells you something too.
Want us to do this for your business?
Get a free audit. We'll show you exactly where your site stands.