Three quotes from three web designers in Destin will come back at three different prices, and not one of them will answer the question that costs you the most later: what the site does on a phone with one bar of signal.
You do not choose a web designer by comparing prices. You choose by asking every candidate the same nine questions, in writing, and comparing the answers. Four of those answers — how their work loads on your phone, the first-year total, whether they have ever shipped something that takes money, and who writes the words — will separate the field faster than any portfolio.
Here are the nine, then what a good answer sounds like on the four that matter most.
The nine questions to ask a web designer in Destin
Nine questions, asked in writing, of every candidate
- 1
Can I open two sites you built on my phone, on cell data, right now?
Not on the shop's wifi. If both take more than a few seconds to become useful, you have your answer before you read a proposal. Ask for the mobile score in Google's PageSpeed Insights too.
- 2
What is the first-year total, build plus every recurring charge?
Two quotes with the same build price can be a thousand dollars apart by December. Ask for one number that includes hosting, domain, plan fees and anything billed monthly.
- 3
Can I see something you built that takes a booking or a payment?
Anyone can show you a pretty homepage. Far fewer can show you a working transaction with real money moving through it.
- 4
Who writes the copy, and is it in the price?
Most quotes assume you supply the words. If you do not have them, someone bills to write them, and that is usually where a fair quote turns expensive.
- 5
What is explicitly not included?
Logo design, photography, e-commerce, migrations of an old site, ad management. All reasonable to exclude. The problem is only ever finding out in month two.
- 6
Is this a template, and who else has the same one?
A theme is not a crime. Paying custom prices for one is. Ask for the name of the template or the platform, then search it.
- 7
What will someone searching from Birmingham in June find?
Your customer is planning a trip three weeks out. Ask what the site does for search: page titles, schema, a finished Google Business Profile, and a page for the place you actually work.
- 8
What happens to my Google rankings when the new site goes live?
A redesign that changes every page address without redirects throws away years of rankings in a day. Ask who maps the old pages to the new ones, and who checks Search Console the week after launch.
- 9
What happens when a form stops sending on the Fourth of July?
Ask who answers, how fast, and whether it is included. In a seasonal town, a broken booking form in July is the whole year.
What a straight answer on speed sounds like
This is the failure that catches the most owners on this coast, and it never shows up in a proposal, because proposals are read on a laptop.
Your customer is not on a laptop. They are on the sand at Grayton Beach with one bar, on a boat deck off the harbor, or in a car on 98 with someone reading directions out loud. A site that takes several seconds to become useful there is a site that never gets read, however good it looks on a big screen in an office.
The straight answer sounds like this: the site is built for the phone first, images are compressed before they ship, nothing autoplays on cell data, the phone number is one tap from the top of every page, and here is the mobile score on a site we launched last month. Then they hand you the phone.
The evasive answer is "it's fully responsive." Responsive means it fits the screen. It says nothing about how long it takes to arrive.
How to spot a template shop before you sign
A lot of 30A and Destin sites are template builds that look fine on a laptop in an office and fall apart on a phone at the beach. Four-second hero images on one bar of signal. A menu buried in a PDF. A reservation button that hands your customer to a platform charging you per cover.
What you often get
A template with your logo on it
- A theme bought once and resold to every client
- Your town's name swapped into copy written for everywhere
- Big images that crawl on a beach connection
- Booking handed off to a platform that takes a cut of every trip
- Stock photos of a coastline that is not this one
It exists.
What to hold out for
A site built for the job
- Custom code, written for your business and nobody else's
- Copy that names Grayton Beach, HarborWalk or Destin Commons because you work there
- Loads fast on a phone with one bar, measured, not promised
- Booking and deposits taken on your own site
- Your photos, your boat, your dining room
It competes.
The template tell is the copy, not the layout. Read the About page on two sites from their portfolio. If you could swap the town names and nothing else would change, they are writing for everywhere, and they will write for everywhere on yours.
Add up the first year, not the build
A cheap build with an expensive monthly plan is not cheap. Put the twelve-month total side by side instead.
Ours is published so you can use it as a yardstick: $1,500 for a one-page Launch Page, $2,500 for a five-page Business Site, $4,500 for a Growth Site that takes bookings or orders, $6,500 for an AI-Powered Site that also answers questions at midnight. The recurring side is just as visible.
Care Plan
$150/mo
Hosting, updates, monitoring and one hour of content changes a month.
Monthly, cancel any time after 3 months
AI Care Plan
$250/mo
Care Plan plus the assistant: hosting, monitoring and a monthly review of what it answered.
Monthly
Local SEO Sprint
$1,500
One-time build-out of the foundation Google actually ranks on.
2 weeks
Local SEO Monthly
$750/mo
The ongoing work most owners never get to, done every month with a report.
3-month minimum
| Plan | Price | What it is | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Care Plan | $150/mo | Hosting, updates, monitoring and one hour of content changes a month. | Monthly, cancel any time after 3 months |
| AI Care Plan | $250/mo | Care Plan plus the assistant: hosting, monitoring and a monthly review of what it answered. | Monthly |
| Local SEO Sprint | $1,500 | One-time build-out of the foundation Google actually ranks on. | 2 weeks |
| Local SEO Monthly | $750/mo | The ongoing work most owners never get to, done every month with a report. | 3-month minimum |
The Care Plan is $150/mo for hosting, SSL, security updates, uptime monitoring and one hour of content changes. With an AI assistant it is $250/mo and adds a monthly review of what the assistant actually told your customers. Ongoing local SEO is separate on purpose, because it is ongoing work: a one-time Local SEO Sprint at $1,500, or $750/mo.
Ask every candidate for those three numbers — build, monthly, and anything billed annually — and do the arithmetic yourself.
Ask to see something that takes money
This question separates designers more sharply than any other, because a booking flow is where the invisible work lives.
When PARA, a youth sports association in Pace, needed coaches to reserve one of 18 lighted fields and pay by card, the design was the easy half. The real job was making a double booking impossible at the database level, holding a slot for ten minutes while a coach checks out, and making a card retry that cannot charge twice. That system, scoped and launched in under two weeks, is on our work page alongside the sample sites we built to show what each package looks like.
If a charter captain asks for direct booking with a deposit, you want someone who has thought about what happens when two people tap "book" on the same 6 a.m. trip.
Why "website designer near me" still means something here
Remote shops can build a fine website. What they cannot do is know that hours change in October, that your customer is searching from Birmingham three weeks before they arrive, or that Grayton Beach and Rosemary Beach are different markets to the people who live in them.
We are in Freeport, about 25 minutes from the harbor and 20 minutes down 331 to the beach, and we meet on your boat or in your dining room. The market detail sits on the pages themselves: what we build for charters, restaurants and rentals in Destin, and for the sixteen neighborhoods on 30A.
Ask a candidate what they would name on your pages. If the answer is not a specific place, they are writing for everywhere.
What we would do
Write one sentence before you talk to anyone: the job this website has to do. Fill Tuesday nights. Book trips direct. Stop answering the same question by phone at 9 p.m. Send that sentence and the nine questions to three designers, then compare written answers, first-year totals and one portfolio site opened on your own phone.
Our answers to the questions we hear most are on the web design page, and the rate card is public so there is nothing to extract on a call. Most sites are live in two to four weeks.
Be realistic about what comes after launch. Destin is the most competitive market on this coast, and a site alone does not outrank a decade-old competitor. With a complete Google profile and steady reviews, the first page for your category is a months-long project, not a launch-day event; your own name and your neighborhood come far sooner.
Book a free 20-minute website consult at /book?type=website, or call (850) 296-2003. Bring the quotes you already have — we will tell you what each one is actually buying, even if the answer is that one of them is a good deal and you should take it.
