5 Crucial Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Web Designer in Nairobi
UX Potential
··17 min read
5 Crucial Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Web Designer in Nairobi (2026)
Why these five questions specifically:
Most “questions to ask a web designer” articles give you a list of twenty safe, generic prompts. This article gives you five targeted questions — each engineered to reveal something a Nairobi designer cannot fake. The distinction is between questions that produce polished sales answers and questions that expose real capability, real process, and real risk. Use all five. Take notes. Compare answers across your shortlist.
Nairobi’s web design market is enormous, fast-growing, and wildly uneven in quality. Between UX Potential, Upwork, referrals from other business owners, and cold outreach from designers who found your number somewhere, a business owner preparing to commission a website will speak to anywhere from three to fifteen candidates. Most of those conversations will sound similar. Designers in Nairobi are often articulate, enthusiastic, and very comfortable with the language of web projects.
The problem is that competent-sounding answers are easy to produce. What is hard to fake is a live portfolio that loads on a Safaricom connection, a detailed technical explanation of an M-Pesa integration flow, or a clear and immediate answer to who owns the hosting account after launch.
You are not looking for the candidate who gives the most impressive sales pitch. You are looking for the candidate whose answers hold up under scrutiny — in the specific Nairobi context, with the specific challenges that context presents.
40+Average number of proposals a Nairobi business receives within 48 hours of posting a web design job online
~70%Share of Kenyan web traffic from mobile devices — what every Nairobi designer must build for first
5 secHow long a Nairobi user on 3G will wait before abandoning a slow-loading page
Before getting to the questions, a note on setting: whenever possible, ask these questions in person or on a video call, not over WhatsApp text. The pace and specificity of the answers matter as much as the content. A designer who answers Question 2 confidently and in detail, without hesitation, has almost certainly done it before. A designer who produces a vague paragraph after a long pause probably hasn’t.
1
“Can you show me a live Kenyan site you built in the last 12 months — and open it on my phone right now?”
This is the question that filters out the largest number of unsuitable candidates fastest. It does three things simultaneously: it asks for recent work (not a three-year-old project), it asks for Kenyan work (not international templates), and it performs the test that matters most — loading on a real Kenyan device, on a real Kenyan mobile network.
The “right now” element is critical. When a designer opens a portfolio site on your phone during the meeting, you are watching an uncontrolled live test. The site either loads in under four seconds or it doesn’t. It either works without horizontal scrolling or it doesn’t. The WhatsApp button either works with a single tap or it doesn’t.
Fig 1. The live phone test: what a well-optimised Nairobi business website looks and behaves like on a real mobile device and Kenyan data connection. Each of these checks can be performed during the interview meeting itself — no special tools required.
What a good answer looks like
✓ Strong answer
The designer opens their phone immediately, pulls up a specific project, and hands it to you or mirrors it to the screen. The site loads. They can tell you the client’s name, what the business does, and what they were specifically trying to achieve with the design. When you ask how it performs on PageSpeed, they already know the score — or they run it live. They can name at least one technical decision they made specifically because of Kenyan mobile usage patterns.
✗ Weak answer
“My portfolio is on my website” (but the links are broken, or the sites are offline, or they are screenshots). Or: “Most of my work is under NDA” (for a small business website? Implausible). Or: the site opens on your phone and takes eight seconds, or requires pinching to read the text, or has no visible WhatsApp button. All of these are disqualifying.
⚠ The template reseller test embedded in this question
Ask: “Was this built from a template, and if so, which one?” A designer who built genuinely custom work will answer this honestly and explain what was customised. A designer who downloaded a template from ThemeForest and changed the logo will either lie or evade. Their hesitation tells you everything.
2
“Walk me through exactly how you would integrate M-Pesa on my site.”
This is the single most diagnostic question in the list for any Nairobi business commissioning an e-commerce site or a site that takes online payments. It has an exact, technical answer. That answer is either present or absent, and there is no convincing middle ground.
The Safaricom Daraja API is Kenya’s gateway for programmatic M-Pesa transactions — including the STK push that sends a payment prompt to a customer’s phone. Integrating it requires specific technical steps that a developer who has genuinely done it will describe in precise terms. A developer who has not done it will speak in vague generalities about “payment gateway integration.”
Fig 2. The M-Pesa STK Push payment flow and the technical details an experienced developer mentions without prompting. A designer who cannot describe Step 5 (the callback) and its failure modes has not implemented this before in a production environment.
What a good answer looks like
✓ Strong answer
The designer describes the Daraja API by name and explains the STK push flow unprompted. They mention the callback URL requirement — that Safaricom POSTs payment confirmation to a server endpoint and that the developer must handle this callback to update the order status. They know that sandbox credentials differ from production. They mention at least one common failure scenario they have handled before, such as a customer being charged but the order not being created because the callback was not properly implemented.
✗ Weak answer
“Yes, I can integrate M-Pesa. I’ve done it many times.” With no technical elaboration when pressed. Or: “I’ll use a plugin for that” without being able to name the plugin or explain how it interacts with a Safaricom paybill or till number. Or: “It’s just like PayPal integration” — demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding of how Daraja API differs from Western payment gateways.
If you do not plan to offer M-Pesa payments, adapt this question to whatever the most complex technical element of your project is. For a booking system, ask them to walk through how availability is checked and confirmed. For a membership portal, ask how they would handle authentication. The principle is the same: specific technical questions produce answers that reveal real depth or its absence.
3
“After launch, who owns the domain, hosting, and code — and can I get all the login credentials before I pay the final invoice?”
This question addresses the single most common source of post-launch disputes in Nairobi’s web design market. It is not a hypothetical risk — it is a pattern so prevalent that every article on red flags in Kenyan web design mentions it as the primary concern.
Here is how the trap typically plays out: a designer registers the client’s domain in their own Namecheap or Kenya Web Experts account, hosts the site on their own shared hosting plan, and never transfers the credentials. When the client wants to make changes, they must go through the designer. When the designer raises their rates, the client has no leverage. When the designer becomes unreliable or simply disappears, the client is stranded — often with a site that redirects to a parked page or simply goes offline.
What a good answer looks like
✓ Strong answer
The designer immediately and without hesitation confirms: the domain is registered in the client’s name at a registrar the client controls directly, the hosting account is under the client’s email address, and the full cPanel or hosting dashboard login is handed over before the final payment is released. They may offer to manage hosting as a paid service on behalf of the client — but the account ownership stays with the client. They can tell you exactly which registrar they use (.ke domains are registered through KENIC-registered resellers) and what the annual renewal cost is.
✗ Weak answer
“I manage hosting for my clients — it’s included in the package.” This sounds helpful. It is a dependency trap. Or: “You can access the site through my client portal.” No. You should access it through the hosting company’s direct login. Or any hesitation, deflection, or “we can discuss that later” in response to this question. The answer should be immediate and unambiguous.
✓ The credentials checklist — what to receive at handover
Before making your final payment, confirm you have received: the domain registrar login and transfer authorisation code; the hosting cPanel username and password; the WordPress (or other CMS) admin login; Google Analytics admin access; Google Search Console ownership verification; and — if M-Pesa is integrated — your Daraja API consumer key, consumer secret, and paybill/till number documentation. If any of these are missing, do not release the final payment.
4
“What happens to my site if we stop working together in six months?”
This question is uncomfortable to ask. It implies distrust. Ask it anyway. The discomfort is precisely why it is valuable — a designer who answers it well is demonstrating professional maturity and genuine confidence in the quality of their work. A designer who becomes defensive is signalling that they have structured the relationship to benefit themselves at your expense.
The question has a right answer: the site remains fully functional, the client has all credentials, the code is in the client’s possession, and the designer has no technical leverage to disrupt operations. Everything the designer built should be deployable and maintainable by another competent developer without the original designer’s involvement.
Fig 3. The difference between correct asset ownership (left) and the dependency trap (right). In the correct structure, every account is registered in the client’s name, and the designer’s departure has zero impact on the site’s operation. In the trap, the designer holds technical leverage over the client indefinitely.
What a good answer looks like
✓ Strong answer
The designer confirms clearly that you will receive all credentials before the final payment, that the site is built on a standard platform (WordPress, typically) that any competent developer can work with, that the code will be handed over without lock-in or obfuscation, and that any hosting the designer manages for you is on an account in your name that you can migrate away from at any time. They may have a legitimate business interest in offering ongoing maintenance services — but there is no structural barrier to you switching providers.
✗ Weak answer
Any answer involving proprietary frameworks the designer built themselves that “require their involvement” to maintain. Or hosting that is “bundled” in a way that cannot be unbundled. Or: “I’ll need to charge a migration fee if you want to move to another host.” Or any version of “my clients don’t normally ask about this.”
5
“How have you optimised a site specifically for 3G users in Kenya?”
This is the most technical of the five questions, and it specifically filters for designers who have actually thought about the Nairobi and broader Kenyan digital environment rather than applying generic web design principles learned from international tutorials.
Despite the rollout of 4G across most of Kenya, 3G connections remain common — particularly in lower-density urban areas, during peak network congestion in Nairobi CBD, and when users are in motion. As we documented in our guide to what makes a good website in Kenya, a poorly optimised site can take six to ten seconds to load on 3G, placing it in the 90%+ bounce rate zone according to Google’s research on page speed and user abandonment.
Fig 4. Six specific performance techniques that an experienced Nairobi web designer applies when building for Kenya’s mobile-heavy, data-constrained audience. A designer who can describe at least four of these in detail, without prompting, understands the local context. A designer who talks about “beautiful design” without mentioning any of these does not.
What a good answer looks like
✓ Strong answer
The designer describes at least two or three specific technical decisions they make for Kenyan mobile users: converting images to WebP format, implementing lazy loading for below-the-fold content, choosing a hosting provider with servers in Nairobi or South Africa, avoiding heavy page builders like Elementor on performance-sensitive pages, and minimising third-party script loading. They may mention Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool or Core Web Vitals as their benchmark. They know what a good mobile PageSpeed score looks like (above 70) and can show you scores from their existing work.
✗ Weak answer
“My sites are responsive, so they work on mobile.” Responsive and optimised are different things. A site that reflows on a small screen is not automatically fast. Any answer that treats mobile performance as a design question rather than an engineering question misses the point entirely. Also: “I use a caching plugin” without being able to explain what it does or how to configure it is not a satisfactory technical answer.
Bonus question — ask this if the project involves ongoing content
“After you hand over the site, can I update pages, add blog posts, and change prices myself — without calling you?”
A professionally built WordPress site should give a non-technical business owner complete control over their own content. If the answer is anything other than “yes, absolutely, and I’ll train you to do it before we close,” the designer has either built something unnecessarily complicated or is deliberately creating dependence for ongoing paid work.
Ask for a five-minute demonstration of the CMS editing interface before you sign the contract. If you cannot navigate it confidently after five minutes with guidance, the platform choice may not be right for you — or the designer has not configured it with the client’s usability in mind.
How to use these five questions as a comparison tool
Preparing the right questions to ask website designer candidates helps you filter for quality and local expertise.
Do not ask these questions once and move on. Ask all five to every candidate on your shortlist. Then compare the answers side by side — not the content alone, but the confidence, the specificity, and the lack of hesitation. The scoring is simple:
Opened a live portfolio on your phone without prompting, site performed well
Described the M-Pesa STK push callback flow without needing to be prompted for technical detail
Immediately and unambiguously confirmed client ownership of all accounts and credentials
Answered the “what if we stop working together” question without becoming defensive
Named specific technical techniques they use for Kenyan 3G performance
A candidate who scores five out of five on this list is the exception in the Nairobi market. But the closer a candidate gets to five, the more confident you can be that you are hiring someone with genuine local expertise and professional integrity — not someone who will learn the hard parts of your project on your time and budget.
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UX Potential is Kenya’s web designer directory — 1,000+ verified listings across 20 counties. The questions in this article are derived from direct experience vetting designers for the directory and from patterns observed across the Nairobi web design market. External links to Safaricom’s Daraja developer portal, KENIC, and Google PageSpeed Insights are provided as reference resources. We do not accept payment for editorial coverage.
UX Potential is Kenya's premier directory for web designers — helping businesses discover, connect with, and hire the best web design talent across the country. We publish insights, tips, and resources to empower both designers and businesses in the digital landscape.
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