Acquisition
How to choose a digital agency: 9 questions before you sign
The questions that separate a vendor who will solve your problem from one who will hand you a file. What to ask, which red flags exist, and what the contract must say.
Short answer
Ask who will do the work, who your contact will be, who owns the code and the ad accounts, what happens if the relationship ends, and ask them to walk you through a project that went badly. The answers to those five separate a partner from a file supplier.
Most bad hires do not happen because the vendor lacked talent, but because nobody asked the uncomfortable questions before signing.
The nine questions
1. Who is going to do the work?
At many agencies, whoever presents the proposal is not whoever executes. That is not wrong in itself, but you need to know. Ask for names and for their current workload.
2. Who is my contact, and how often do we speak?
A project without an agreed rhythm becomes three weeks of silence followed by a surprise handover.
3. How will we measure whether this worked?
If the answer only covers deliverables ("an eight-section site"), you are buying a file. If it covers results you can observe, you are buying an objective. Note: a good vendor will not guarantee a number of sales, because it does not depend on them alone.
4. Who owns the code, the domain and the ad accounts?
You. Always. If the Google Ads or Meta accounts belong to the agency, all the accumulated learning stays with them the day you leave. It is the clause that costs most when discovered late.
5. What happens after launch?
Who updates, who responds if something breaks on a Saturday, what is included and what is billed separately.
6. What do you need from me, and when?
Projects slip on client content far more often than on development. A vendor who asks you for nothing at the start will ask late.
7. Can you show me a project that went badly?
The best question on the list. Everyone has one. What is revealing is not the problem but how they tell it and what they changed afterwards.
8. What will you not do?
A vendor who does everything does a few things well and the rest below par. An honest list of limits is a sign of judgement.
9. Can I speak to a current client?
Not a reference picked to shine, but somebody in the middle of a project right now.
Red flags
- Metrics with no source. An improvement percentage with no tool, no period and no baseline means nothing.
- Ranking guarantees. Nobody controls Google's algorithm. Whoever promises it either does not know, or knows and is lying.
- Quotes with no breakdown. A single figure prevents comparison and hides what is not included.
- Artificial urgency. Discounts that expire today.
- No questions about your business. If they quote without understanding what you sell and to whom, they are quoting a file.
What the contract must say
Scope with concrete deliverables, number of revision rounds, a schedule with dates and dependencies, ownership of code and accounts, what support includes, and how either side ends the relationship.
That last point is almost always ignored, and it is the one that matters when something goes wrong.
About ourselves
ORBITAQ does not publish case studies yet because we only publish a project once the client authorises it in writing and the data is complete. If you want to know whether we have worked on something like yours, ask us directly on a call: it is more useful than a gallery.
In short
Ask who executes, who your contact is, how success is measured, who owns the assets, and what happens when it ends. Distrust metrics without a source and ranking guarantees. And ask them to tell you about a project that went badly.
Want to ask us these questions? Tell us about your project.