How to choose a web agency in French-speaking Switzerland: the criteria that matter

An opaque market, simple criteria

In French-speaking Switzerland, hundreds of web agencies, studios and freelancers compete for the same SME projects. They all show polished mockups, an “agile” process and a set of values. None of that tells you whether the website you receive will be fast, maintainable and, above all, yours. To choose a web agency in French-speaking Switzerland, you therefore have to tell apart, before you sign, the ones that deliver from the ones that sell.

The screening criteria are few, concrete, and can be checked in a few hours of research, without any technical expertise. They are ranked here from the most decisive to the most optional. This screening of candidates happens before you even set up a meeting, ahead of our guide on how to brief a web agency.

A real portfolio, online, that you can visit

The first filter, and the quickest: ask for the addresses of the websites delivered. A screenshot, a mockup on Dribbble or an image in a PDF proves nothing: anyone can produce an attractive visual that has never run in production. A live website, on the other hand, can be visited and tested.

Visit three or four recent projects on your phone, over 4G, and check whether the site loads quickly, whether the mobile navigation holds up and whether the content looks maintained or abandoned since launch. A portfolio where half the links are dead or lead to neglected websites says a lot about the relationship after delivery.

One last point: check that the agency itself produced what it shows. Ask what exactly it did on each project (design, development, content, or only a partial redesign): an honest agency answers without beating about the bush.

An explained tech stack and measurable performance

Two questions are enough to judge the technology, even without understanding it.

First: “why this stack for my project?” A serious agency justifies its choices by your needs: performance, budget, the ability to update the site yourself. An answer like “we do everything on this platform” admits a choice made for the agency’s own convenience.

Then: “what are the Lighthouse scores of your projects?” It is the reference measure of performance, and it is public: you can test any site in the portfolio yourself in PageSpeed Insights, free of charge, in 30 seconds. If the sites delivered top out at 50/100 on mobile, you know what yours will look like. This score has commercial consequences, because speed shapes both SEO and conversion. Our article on the Lighthouse score explains how to read these figures.

Ownership of the code, the domain and the content

This is the number one red flag in French-speaking Switzerland, and the most expensive one when you discover it too late. Every year, SMEs find out, when they change provider, that they own neither the code of their website, nor their domain name (registered in the agency’s name “to keep things simple”), nor a usable export of their content. They are then left to redo everything from scratch or stay locked in.

Before signing, insist on a written answer to three questions: will the source code be handed over to me on delivery? Will the domain be registered in my company’s name? Can my content be exported in a standard format? The only acceptable answer is yes, three times, with no conditions and no extra charge.

Transparent prices, a readable quote

On the market in French-speaking Switzerland, two billing models coexist: the fixed price, a set price for a defined scope, and time and materials, a daily rate billed for the time spent. Both are legitimate if they are priced precisely. A one-line quote (“website creation: CHF 20,000”) with no breakdown of the items, or time and materials with no estimate of volume, amounts to signing a blank cheque.

A serious quote details what is included, what is not, and the cost of any overruns. It lets you compare quotes item by item. To get your bearings, the Swiss market ranges are documented in our article on the cost of a website in Switzerland: an SME business website costs between CHF 4,000 with a freelancer and CHF 40,000 with an established agency, depending on the scope. An agency that refuses to give even a rough order of magnitude before three meetings is wasting your time.

Who really does the work

Part of the market works on a white-label basis: the agency sells, collects the payment, and subcontracts production to external providers, sometimes offshore. The practice is defensible if it is disclosed. It becomes a problem when you pay a local team’s rate for work carried out elsewhere, without quality control, with a contact person who cannot answer a single technical question.

The question to ask: “who, by name, will design and develop my website, and where does that person work?” A precise answer is a good sign. An evasive answer (“our network of partners”) deserves a closer look: ask who will fix a bug six months after delivery, and how quickly.

After delivery: maintenance and changes

A website needs work after it goes live: security updates, backups, fixes, small improvements. This recurring work must be scoped before signing.

Three points to clarify: the cost of maintenance (a monthly fee or work on demand, with the rates), the response time in the event of an outage, and the cost of routine changes (an extra page, a modified section). An agency that answers “we’ll see after delivery” is paving the way for opaque billing.

Being local in French-speaking Switzerland: useful, not sufficient

Working with an agency based in French-speaking Switzerland has real advantages: the same time zone, the possibility of meeting in person, content written by native French speakers, and knowledge of local specifics (TWINT, the nFADP, hosting in Switzerland, the .ch market). For a project with an editorial dimension or local SEO, that matters.

These specifics also vary from one canton to the next, and a local agency should know them. For website design in Geneva, you have to allow for clients who often read English first. A web agency in Fribourg adds German as soon as the clientele crosses the Sarine, as does a web agency in Valais once it extends beyond Sierre. In the Neuchâtel Montagnes, the watchmaking industry sells abroad, and a web agency in Neuchâtel then delivers an English version. In the canton of Vaud, businesses that also sell in German-speaking Switzerland and Ticino often aim for four languages: that is the case our web agency in the canton of Vaud handles. Our local pages are gathered on website design in French-speaking Switzerland.

But do not turn it into a dogma. A mediocre local agency is still mediocre, and proximity makes up neither for a weak portfolio nor for code you will not own. Use proximity as a tie-breaker between two strong candidates.

The red flags that end the conversation

Some signals justify cutting your losses immediately.

• A promise of a guaranteed Google ranking (“first page assured”). Nobody controls Google’s algorithm. At best this promise is marketing, at worst it is a sign of techniques that expose your site to a penalty.
• A firm quote without a specification. Pricing a project without having defined its scope is either improvisation or a teaser price that will swell along the way.
• A CMS or platform imposed without justification. If the tool is chosen before your needs are understood, it is the agency’s convenience that decides.
• A refusal to hand over the code or the access credentials. See above: it is a deliberate lock-in.
• Sales pressure: a discount “valid until Friday”, insistent follow-ups before you even have a quote. A good provider does not need to force your hand.

A single one of these signals is enough, whatever the rest of the file looks like.

Going further

See our website design service: methodology, performance commitments, code handed over on delivery. You can assess us against every criterion in this article.

Website design in French-speaking Switzerland: the areas we cover, from Geneva to Valais, with a free mockup of your homepage.

How to brief a web agency: 10 questions: once your shortlist is drawn up, the guide to the briefing meeting.

How much does a website cost in Switzerland in 2026: the real market ranges, by type of project, so you can read quotes with reference points.

The service catalogue: every package and its price, before any meeting.