How to Choose a Web Design Agency in Dubai: A Buyer's Checklist

Most businesses in Dubai pick a web design agency the same way: a few portfolio links, a call or two, and the quote that feels right. The trouble shows up later, when the site is slow on a phone, a change costs more than expected, or the domain turns out to be registered to someone else.

None of those problems are hard to spot in advance. They just need the right questions, asked before the contract is signed rather than after launch. This guide turns those questions into eight checks you can run on any shortlist, whatever the size of your project.

Each figure below is linked to its original source, and none of it is a sales pitch for a particular agency. Use it to compare us, or anyone else.

In this guide

• Start With Your Own Brief
• Check It Is a Real, Licensed UAE Business
• Judge the Portfolio on Live Sites, on a Phone
• Ask How They Build for Accessibility
• Ask How They Build for Google and AI Search
• Read the Proposal and Contract Line by Line
• Make Sure You Own Every Account From Day One
• Check Reviews and References Off Their Website
• Agree What Happens After Launch
• A Scorecard to Compare Your Shortlist
• Questions to Ask Before You Sign
• Red Flags
• Frequently Asked Questions

Start With Your Own Brief

Before you contact any agency, write one page on what the website has to do, who it is for, and what it must connect to. A clear brief is the only way to get quotes you can compare, because every agency then prices the same job instead of its own guess at it.

Your brief does not need to be technical. It needs answers to these questions:

• The job of the site. Bring in enquiries, sell products, take bookings, or support sales calls with credibility?
• Who uses it. Your main customers, the language they search in, and the device they are likely to use.
• The pages and features. A rough page list, plus any forms, booking, payments, logins or product filters.
• What it connects to. Your CRM, payment gateway, booking system, stock or delivery software.
• Who runs it after launch. Your team, the agency, or both. This decides how much training and support you need.
• How you will judge it. Enquiries, sales, or calls booked, so the agency designs for the right outcome.

If you are still deciding between a ready-made theme and a site designed from scratch, read our comparison of a template or custom build first. It changes which agencies belong on your shortlist.

Check It Is a Real, Licensed UAE Business

Ask every agency for its trade licence and check it yourself on an official portal. A real business will share its licence number without hesitation, and the licensed activity should cover the work you are buying. Two minutes of checking here removes the biggest risk on the list.

The UAE government portal lists the official places to verify a business licence, a business name and its activities, including the Dubai Economy and Tourism licence search and the National Economic Registry. Agencies registered in a free zone are checked with that free zone's authority instead.

Two more checks take a minute each:

• VAT on the quote. Under Article 3 of the UAE VAT law, most supplies carry a 5% rate. Ask each agency whether its figure already includes that 5% or adds it on top, otherwise two quotes that look equal may not be. A VAT-registered agency will show its Tax Registration Number (TRN) on the quote and the invoice.
• A real team you can meet. Ask who will actually work on your project and whether you can meet them. The Stanford Web Credibility guidelines advise showing that "there's a real organization behind your site". The same test applies to the agency you hire.

Judge the Portfolio on Live Sites, on a Phone

Ask for links to live websites, not screenshots, and open them on your phone first. Most visits in the UAE come from mobile devices, so a design that only looks good on a large screen is not doing its job. Then test the speed of two or three of those sites with Google's free tool.

In September 2026, mobile accounted for 60.04% of web visits in the UAE, against 38.91% for desktop, according to StatCounter. And almost everyone is online: DataReportal put UAE internet use at 99.0% of the population in January 2025.

Speed is where many sites fall short. Google's Core Web Vitals set three "good" thresholds: the main content should load within 2.5 seconds (LCP), the page should respond to a tap within 200 milliseconds (INP), and the layout should not jump around (CLS of 0.1 or less). Only 48% of mobile websites met all three in 2025, according to the HTTP Archive Web Almanac.

How to test a portfolio site in five minutes

• Open the site on your phone. Is it clear within seconds what the business does and how to contact it?
• Run the address through PageSpeed Insights and look at the real-user data at the top, not only the lab score.
• Fill in a form. Does it work, and does it say what happens next?
• Click through to inner pages. Agencies polish their best page; the rest of the site shows their normal standard.
• Ask which parts of the project the agency did itself. Some portfolios include sites where the agency only made small updates.

First impressions matter for your own visitors too. Research by the Nielsen Norman Group found the first 10 seconds of a visit are critical to whether people stay or leave (a 2011 study, still widely used). If you would like an outside view of your current site before you brief anyone, a UX audit gives you that baseline.

Ask How They Build for Accessibility

Ask which accessibility standard the agency builds to, and expect a specific answer: WCAG 2.2 at level AA. It is a testable standard published by the W3C, so it belongs in the contract. Clear contrast, readable text and labelled forms also help every visitor on a small screen.

The W3C's WCAG 2.2 has three levels, A, AA and AAA, and adds nine new success criteria, such as minimum sizes for buttons and links you tap. The basics are still widely missed: only around 31% of mobile sites meet the minimum colour contrast requirement, and around 13-14% of images have no alt attribute at all, according to the Web Almanac accessibility chapter.

Good questions to ask: how do you test colour contrast and keyboard use, who writes the image descriptions, and are form fields labelled so screen readers can read them?

If you need an Arabic and English site

Ask to see live bilingual sites the agency has built and switch between the two languages. The Arabic version should mirror properly from right to left, including menus, forms and tables, rather than simply swapping the text. Also ask who will write and update the Arabic content. Our guide to building an Arabic and English website covers what to check in detail.

Ask How They Build for Google and AI Search

Ask the agency what it sets up so search engines and AI assistants can find, read and trust your site, and who owns those settings afterwards. A good answer covers clean page structure, page titles and descriptions, a sitemap, and Google Analytics and Search Console set up in your own accounts. A vague "SEO is included" is not an answer.

More people now ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Google's AI answers for recommendations before they search the usual way. Those tools tend to quote pages that answer a question clearly, show who is behind them and are easy to read for both people and machines. You do not need an agency to promise you rankings or AI mentions; nobody can promise either. You do need one that builds a site those tools can read.

Ask these four questions:

• Will search engines and AI crawlers be able to read the site, or will anything block them?
• How are page titles, descriptions and headings written, and who signs them off?
• Will Google Analytics and Google Search Console be set up in our accounts, with us as owner?
• If this site replaces an older one, how do you protect the pages that already bring in visitors?

One simple test: ask an AI assistant about the agency itself, or search for it, and see what comes back. Our guide on how to get cited by AI chatbots explains what those tools look for. Moving from an older site? Our guide to refresh or rebuild covers how to keep existing search traffic.

Read the Proposal and Contract Line by Line

A good proposal says exactly what you get, what it costs, how changes are handled and who owns the work at the end. If two quotes look far apart, the cause is usually in the scope, so compare them line by line rather than on the total. Anything spoken but not written down does not count.

Check that each proposal covers:

• Scope: the pages, templates, features and integrations included, and what is excluded.
• Content: who writes the words, who supplies photos, and whether translation is included.
• Revisions: how many rounds of changes are included at each stage, and what counts as a new request.
• Payment milestones: payments tied to delivered stages (for example design sign-off and launch), not the full amount upfront.
• Ownership: a clear clause that transfers the design files, code and content to you when the final invoice is settled.
• VAT: listed on its own line rather than buried in the total.
• Data protection: how contact forms, cookies and tracking will handle personal data.

Data protection is not optional. The UAE government's data protection page explains that the federal law prohibits processing personal data without the owner's consent, with limited exceptions. Contact forms, newsletter sign-ups and analytics all collect personal data, so ask how consent, the privacy notice and data storage will be handled.

For what the money covers and how to compare three quotes side by side, see our breakdown of what a website costs in Dubai.

Make Sure You Own Every Account From Day One

Every account your website depends on should be registered to your business, with your email address as the owner, from the start of the project. The agency can be given access to do its work. When an account is opened under the agency's details instead, moving to a new team later becomes slow and sometimes expensive.

This matters most for the domain. Under the .ae Domain Name Policy, the registrant does not own a domain name but holds an exclusive licence to use it, and the TDRA notes that only your registrar may change your domain details, and only with your permission. So the registrant should be your company, not the agency.

Check Reviews and References Off Their Website

Look for reviews the agency does not control, and speak to at least one past client. Testimonials on an agency's own site are chosen by the agency. Independent reviews and a short reference call tell you how it handles deadlines, problems and changes of plan.

1. Google reviews: read the recent ones and how the agency replies to criticism.
2. Review platforms: platforms such as Clutch publish client reviews. Check how recent they are and how each one was verified, not only the score.
3. References: ask for two past clients, ideally in your industry, and ask them what they would do differently.
4. LinkedIn: check that the people named on the agency's website actually work there.

Agree What Happens After Launch

Agree in writing what support you get after the site goes live: how long bugs are fixed without charge, what counts as a bug versus a new request, and what ongoing maintenance costs. Websites need updates, backups and security fixes, so plan for them before launch rather than after the first problem.

• How long is the free bug-fixing period after launch, and how do you report a problem?
• What is included in a monthly maintenance plan: updates, backups, security monitoring, content changes?
• What is the rate for work outside the plan?
• Will your team be trained to update the site, and is there written guidance?
• If you part ways, how is the site handed over?

If you would rather have one team look after updates, backups and security, see our website maintenance service.

A Scorecard to Compare Your Shortlist

Score each agency from 1 to 5 on the eight checks below after your calls, then compare the totals. The scorecard keeps the decision about the same questions for every agency, so the most confident pitch does not win by default. Weight the rows that matter most to your project.

Questions to Ask Before You Sign

These are the questions to put to every agency on your shortlist, in the same order, so you can compare the answers. Ask them in writing as well as on a call, and keep the replies with the proposal.

About the business

1. What is your trade licence number, and which authority issued it?
2. Is your quote inclusive or exclusive of VAT, and what is your TRN?
3. Who will work on our project, and can we meet them?

About the work

1. Can you share live sites similar to ours, and which parts did your team build?
2. Which platform do you recommend for us, and why that one?
3. Which accessibility standard do you build to, and how do you test it?
4. What do you set up for Google and AI search, and in whose accounts?
5. If this site replaces an older one, how do you keep our existing search traffic?

About the contract

1. What exactly is included, and what is not?
2. How many rounds of revisions are included, and what counts as a change request?
3. What is the payment schedule, and which stage does each payment cover?
4. Who owns the design files, code and content when the project is paid for?
5. How will our contact forms and analytics handle personal data?

About after launch

1. How long do you fix bugs free of charge after launch?
2. What does ongoing maintenance include, and what does it cost?
3. Will every account be in our name, and what do we receive at handover?
4. Can we speak to two of your past clients?

Red Flags

Walk away, or at least slow down, if you see any of these. Each one is cheap to spot before signing and expensive to fix after launch.

• A quote far below the others with the same scope on paper. Something has been left out.
• No written proposal, or a scope that lives only in chat messages.
• Reluctance to share a trade licence or a VAT number.
• Portfolio links that are offline, slow on a phone, or look like the same template.
• Promises of first-page rankings or AI mentions. Nobody controls either.
• Important work such as search setup pushed into a vague "phase two".
• The domain or hosting registered in the agency's name.
• Full payment requested before any work is delivered.

Choosing With Confidence

The right agency is the one that answers these questions clearly, in writing, before you pay anything. Shortlist three, send each the same brief, score them on the same eight checks, and keep every account in your name.

If you would like Crafixx on your shortlist, send your brief to our web design agency in Dubai and put these questions to us as well. Projects that need integrations are scoped with our web development company in Dubai team, and online stores with our e-commerce development team, with a written quote before work starts.