Meeting a web designer in Andheri West: what to expect and bring

Meeting a web designer in Andheri West is most useful when you treat it as a working session rather than a sales pitch. Expect the designer to ask far more than they talk, open your current site on a phone and show you live work that solved a problem like yours. Bring your logo files, photos, GST details and a budget range, leave your passwords at home, and come away with an agreed next step: a written scope and a fixed quote to follow, not a number said across the table.

What happens at a first meeting with a web designer?

A good first meeting is mostly questions. The designer should want to understand your business before showing you anything, look at your current site and two or three competitors on a phone, as your customers would, and then show you live work that fits your problem. Expect questions like these:

• Where do your enquiries come from today? Walk-ins, calls, WhatsApp, Instagram messages, Justdial or IndiaMART, referrals. The answer decides whether the site leads with a call button, a WhatsApp button or a form.
• What happens after someone enquires? Who replies on WhatsApp, and who reads the form emails? A form that lands in an inbox nobody checks loses leads quietly.
• What do customers ask before they buy or book? The questions your staff answer on the phone every day are the most useful content a website can carry.
• Who will update the site, and how often? A café that changes its menu every week needs a simpler editing screen than a firm that edits a page twice a year.
• What isn't working now? Slow pages, enquiries that dried up, a site you can't edit or a developer who stopped replying. Each one points to a different fix.

If the meeting is mostly a menu of packages, with a page count and a price before anyone has asked about your customers, you're being sold a template rather than a website planned around your business.

Should you meet in person or on a video call?

Both work, and many projects use both. Meet in person when the designer should see the place itself, such as a salon's reception, a clinic's waiting area or a showroom's displays, or when two partners or family members share the decision and should hear the same thing. A video call is better for screen-sharing your current site and competitors, and for quick follow-ups.

If you're visiting a studio in Andheri West, call first. Studios here work from all kinds of buildings, from office units along Link Road and Veera Desai Road to offices inside residential societies in the MHADA layouts near Four Bungalows and Versova, so the signboard may be small. Check that the address on the studio's website matches its Google Business Profile, and ask about evening slots if you can only leave the shop after closing (our studio stays open until 10 pm, Monday to Saturday, for that reason).

What to bring: a first-meeting checklist

If you've written a brief, bring it; the website brief template shows what goes into one. Either way, these make a first meeting far more useful:

• Your website and domain details: the web address, and the names of the companies your domain and hosting are with. Names only; logins come later, and safely.
• Your logo in its original file. If a local printer designed it, ask them for the CorelDRAW (.cdr), .ai, .svg or .pdf file. A photo of your visiting card won't look sharp on a website.
• Photos and videos you own of the shop, team, products and work. Phone photos are fine for planning, and the designer can tell you which shots need a proper shoot.
• Your brochure, catalogue, menu or rate card, even if it's out of date.
• Links to competitors and to two or three sites you like, with a line on why.
• Your GST details, if you're registered: the exact legal name, address and GSTIN. Rule 46 of the CGST Rules requires a tax invoice to show these when the buyer is registered, and you need a correct tax invoice to claim input tax credit.
• A budget range and any fixed dates, such as a shop opening, an exhibition or a festive-season sale. If you're unsure of the range, the free website cost estimator shows how big a project you're describing and what will drive its cost.

Extras for your kind of business

For property businesses, the last row isn't optional. MahaRERA requires the registration number, MahaRERA's website address and the project's QR code on project websites as well as print ads, and registered agents must show their own registration number too. Its orders change, so check the latest with your lawyer before launch.

What should you ask the designer?

The deeper checks before you sign, such as verifying a GSTIN, the copyright clause and references, are in this 12-point checklist for choosing a web design company. At the meeting itself, ask how the work will actually run:

• Who will design and build my site, and who do I call when something breaks? You want names, not departments.
• Can you show me the editing screen? Ask them to open the admin area of a demo or a past project, so you can judge whether your staff will manage it.
• How many rounds of design changes are included? And what counts as a change rather than new work?
• What do you need from us? Text, photos, product details and approvals are the usual hold-ups, so ask for the list in writing.
• What if we want something extra halfway through? The answer you want: it's explained and quoted separately, in writing, before any work starts.

How do you share logins without sharing passwords?

It's tempting to hand over a Gmail password at the first meeting, or send it on WhatsApp later. Don't. The Google tools a website needs let you add the designer as a separate user, whom you can remove later without changing anything else, and nobody ever needs your OTP.

• Google Business Profile: in Business Profile settings, under People and access, add the designer's email as a Manager. Google's help on owners and managers explains that each person uses their own Google Account, so no password changes hands, and that managers can't add or remove users or delete the profile.
• Search Console: make sure your business's own Google account is an owner, because only an owner can add users, under Settings, then Users and permissions. Add the designer as a full user, which can see all the data and submit a sitemap.
• Google Analytics: in Admin, under Access Management, add the designer with the role they need, such as Editor, and keep the Administrator role yourself.
• Domain and hosting: if the account allows only one login, set a temporary password for the project, make sure the recovery email and phone number are yours, and change the password at handover.

What should arrive after the meeting?

The next step should be in writing. Expect a scope listing the pages, features and integrations, who writes the text and supplies photos, and what isn't included, along with a fixed quote for that scope, payments tied to stages you approve and a list of what the designer needs from you. A few follow-up questions before the quote are a good sign, because they mean someone read your answers properly. That's how we work too: questions first, then a written scope and a fixed quote.

Compare the scopes from different designers before you compare the totals, and slow down if you see any of these:

• A figure sent on WhatsApp with no scope behind it.
• A proposal that could have gone to anyone, with nothing in it from your meeting.
• A request for your Gmail password or an OTP.
• Pressure to pay the full amount upfront to "lock" the price.

FAQs

Should I expect a price at the first meeting?

A rough range, perhaps, but not a firm figure. A fixed price needs a scope: the pages, features, integrations and who prepares the content. A designer who names a final figure before asking about those is guessing, and guesses tend to grow once the work starts. Ask for the scope and a fixed quote in writing after the meeting.

Who from my business should come to the meeting?

The person who will approve the work, and the person who will run the site day to day if that's someone else. In a family business or a partnership, bring whoever has the final say, even if they only join for part of the meeting. Feedback from someone who wasn't in the room tends to arrive late and undo earlier decisions.

Do I need an NDA before the first meeting?

Only if you'll share something genuinely confidential, such as a product that hasn't launched, supplier terms or sales figures. Most first meetings cover your public business and goals, so they don't need one. If you do want one, send it ahead of the meeting so it can be read and signed properly, rather than producing it at the table.

How should we share feedback once the project starts?

Through one person and one channel. Agree whether decisions go by email or in a single WhatsApp group, and have one person on your side gather everyone's comments into one list for each round. Five people sending separate voice notes about the same page is the quickest way to stall a project and pay for changes nobody agreed on.

If you're planning a website and you're in or near Andheri West, you're welcome to use this checklist on us. The Andheri West studio page has our address and hours, and the website design and development service page explains what a project includes. When you're ready, tell us about your business and we'll set up a call, a video meeting or a visit.