Five years ago you could spot a dodgy website bloke by the state of his portfolio. Not any more. AI made shiny cheap. Anyone can knock up a homepage that looks like a million quid in an afternoon, me included. So the portfolio stopped being the test. The conversation is the test now, and here are the seven questions to run it with. Use them on anyone offering to build your website. Including me.
You already have this skill, by the way. You can tell inside thirty seconds whether another trade knows their stuff by how they talk about a job. What they ask about. What they warn you about. Whether the price comes with reasons attached. Websites work exactly the same way. You just need to know what a good answer sounds like.
One rule firstAsk on a call. Not in the comments.
Messenger gives people somewhere to hide. A question typed into a chat can be pasted into ChatGPT, and the answer pasted back to you sixty seconds later, wearing a confidence it didn't earn. On the phone there's nowhere to go. A pro answers from experience, immediately, with trade-offs. Someone renting their expertise from a chatbot stalls, waffles, or offers to "come back to you on that".
You're not testing whether they use AI. You're testing what's left if you take it away.
What to ask, and what a good answer sounds like
"Why these pages and not others?"
A pro talks about how your customers actually search: a page per service, a page per area you cover, because "boiler repair Solihull" and "boiler repair Redditch" are two different searches with two different winners.
Walk away when: the answer is "that's what comes with the package." A package with no reasoning is a template with your logo on it.
"What happens in month two?"
A pro has a named rhythm: what gets added, what gets refreshed, what gets reported, and when. The site is a service, not a handover.
Walk away when: there's a pause, or a cheerful "it's all yours, off you go!" That's not a website. That's a leaflet that cost you a domain name.
"If we fall out, what do I keep?"
A pro answers instantly: domain in your name, content yours, site exportable, and they'll say so in writing. Good providers make leaving easy because they don't plan on giving you a reason to.
Walk away when: the domain, hosting and logins all live with them "to keep things simple". Simple for whom?
"How will somebody actually find it?"
A pro talks specifics in plain English: Google Business Profile, area pages, schema markup so AI tools can read the site, reviews, consistent listings. Bonus points if they mention what ChatGPT and Google's AI answers do to local search, because that's where your next decade of customers is.
Walk away when: you get "SEO is included" and nothing else. Included how? Doing what? "SEO" with no detail is a sticker, not a service.
"Show me one you built a year ago."
A pro has one, live, still updated, still ranking, with an owner who'll take your call and vouch for them. Time is the one thing AI can't fake.
Walk away when: everything in the portfolio launched in the last eight weeks. You're not looking at a track record. You're looking at a sprint.
"What will I have paid in twelve months, all in?"
A pro gives you a number. An actual number, on the call, including hosting, domain, updates, the lot. Mine is on the website in black and white: from £500 build plus £49 a month.
Walk away when: the answer starts with "it depends" and never lands, or the free build turns out to have a monthly fee that was somehow never mentioned in the Facebook post.
"Why did you do it that way?"
The live one. Pick anything on a site they built. A headline, a page, a button. Ask why it's like that. A pro answers from experience, immediately, and tells you what they'd do differently now, because real experience always comes with a few regrets attached.
Walk away when: every "why" needs to go away and check. If the reasons live in a chatbot rather than the person, you're not hiring a builder. You're hiring a middleman with a subscription.
The AI bit, since you're wondering
I use AI every working day, and anyone building websites in 2026 who claims otherwise is either slow or fibbing. It's a power tool. In the hands of somebody who knows the trade, it's brilliant: faster builds, cheaper prices, more pages than a tradesman could ever have afforded five years ago. Zenlio sites are better and cheaper because of it, and I'll say that with a straight face.
But a nail gun doesn't make someone a joiner. The tool does the driving; the trade knows where the nails go. Twenty years across Joblogic, Dropbox, Oracle and ServiceNow taught me which pages win work, what makes a visitor pick up the phone, and what makes Google and the AI tools trust a site. That's the part you're hiring. The seven questions above are just a way of checking it's there.
AI made building websites easy. It did nothing for knowing what to build. That gap is where your money goes, one way or the other.
Anyone can build you a website now. You're hiring the person who can tell you why.
There's a printable cheat sheet below with all seven questions and the walk-away signs, and a two-minute scorecard if you're comparing a couple of offers. And if you'd like to run the questions on me: book the call. I'll enjoy it.