Before you hand a web designer a deposit, you should be able to verify five things about them in fifteen minutes, using nothing but public records and a phone. Las Vegas has excellent web professionals and it has resellers, ghosts, and template mills wearing local costumes. As a designer who competes here, I would rather teach every buyer the vetting than win jobs from buyers who could not vet. Here is the fifteen-minute check.

Minute one to three: prove the business exists

Search the company on the Nevada Secretary of State’s public business search (SilverFlume). A real local company has a registration in good standing. No registration, or a registration in another state with no Nevada footprint, tells you the “Las Vegas” in their marketing is a keyword, not an address. While you are there, note how long they have existed; “serving Las Vegas for 15 years” claims should match the paperwork.

Minute four to six: verify the address and the human

Put their office address into a map. Is it an office, a residence, or a mail store? (Mine is 400 S. 4th Street, Suite 500, in Downtown Las Vegas; you are welcome to walk in.) Then find the actual human: a named owner with a real history, a LinkedIn profile with years of consistency, a face that appears in more than one place. Agencies that show no humans are usually fronting for outsourced work, which matters when something breaks at 4 p.m. on a Friday.

Minute seven to ten: test the portfolio

Do not admire the portfolio; test it. Click through to the actual live sites. Are they still online, still fast on your phone, still holding up? Pick one and search Google for that business’s industry and city; does the site actually rank for anything? Then the strongest move almost nobody makes: call one of the portfolio businesses and ask two questions. Was this designer good to work with, and do you own your own domain? A genuinely local portfolio makes that call easy; a dentist in Summerlin or a contractor in Henderson is a real business whose owner will pick up the phone. Sixty seconds with a past client outweighs every testimonial page ever written.

Minute eleven to thirteen: read reviews for patterns, not scores

Any operation can gather five-star reviews. Read the text for patterns: do reviewers mention responsiveness, ownership handovers, and results, or just “great service”? Check multiple sources (Google, Yelp, BBB) for consistency, and pay closest attention to how the company responds to its worst review, because that is a preview of your worst week with them.

Minute fourteen to fifteen: ask the three contract questions

“Is the domain registered in my name, in my account?” Only one acceptable answer. Anything else risks the hostage situation I rescue businesses from monthly.
“Who physically does the work?” In-house and named beats subcontracted and vague, for accountability more than quality.
“What happens if I stop paying the monthly fee?” The honest answer describes what you keep (your site, your content, your domain) and what stops (hosting, maintenance). Vague answers here predict expensive exits.

My published answers to all of these live on my pricing page and FAQ, and the fuller version of this vetting process, written for the person assigned to gather quotes, is in the office manager’s guide.

Red flags that end the conversation

Guaranteed #1 Google rankings (nobody controls Google). Pressure to sign today for a “special price.” A portfolio of sites that are all secretly the same template. No physical presence anywhere. And the subtle one: a designer whose own website is slow, dated, or broken on your phone, because that is the product demonstrating itself.

Run this check on everyone you are considering, very much including me: Las Vegas Website Design, MJM Design, downtown since 2005, owner Matt McWilliam, (702) 608-0002. If we pass your fifteen minutes, request a free quote and you will have an itemized number within one business day.

How to Verify a Las Vegas Web Designer Before You Pay a Deposit