What is web design outsourcing?
Web design outsourcing means paying a designer outside your agency to design a website that you sell to your client. What comes back is a set of page layouts, usually a Figma file. The client, the brief and the presentation all stay with you.
It’s a different purchase from an outsourced build. A build can be checked against a design: it matches or it doesn’t. A design is checked against a brief and a brand, by eye, and then by a client who may change their mind. That’s why we’d put more care into the brief, the revision rounds and the approval step here than on a development job.
Agencies outsource design for one of two reasons. Some have developers but no designer, or a designer who’s fully booked. Others sell marketing, SEO or ads, and a client has asked for a website. Both end up needing the same thing: a file their client approves and a developer can build from.
What can you outsource, and what should stay with you?
You can hand over the layouts. You can’t hand over the decisions behind them, because a designer outside your agency only knows what you tell them about the client.
| Work | Hand it over? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Client discovery and the workshop | Keep | You hold the relationship, and what you learn in the room is the brief. |
| Positioning and messaging | Keep | These are your client’s decisions, made with you. A layout can’t make them. |
| Sitemap and list of templates | Agree together | Draft it yourself, then let the designer question it. It sets the price. |
| Page layouts, desktop and mobile | Hand over | This is the bulk of the work, and it has a clear output: frames in a file. |
| Components, colours, type and spacing | Hand over | They come out of the layouts, and the developer needs them named. |
| Logo and brand identity | Hand over, as its own job | A site can’t be designed around a brand that doesn’t exist yet. Do the identity first. |
| Copy and photography | Keep, or buy separately | Design, copy and photography are separate jobs. With us, page copy isn’t in the design price, though we can write it for an extra fee, quoted before we start. We don’t shoot. Ask any supplier which of these they do. |
| Presenting to your client | Keep | Your client hired your agency. The designer can join a call as part of your team if you want them there. |
If your client has no logo or colours yet, start with white label graphic design and branding and design the site from the result.
How to brief a designer outside your team
An in-house designer picks up the client from meetings and Slack. An outside designer has only the brief. Nine things belong in it.
Who the site is for, and the one thing each page should get them to do.
Two or three sentences on the client’s customers, then a single action per template: book, buy, call or sign up. Ask a page to do three things and you end up with a layout that does none of them well.
The list of templates.
Name every unique layout: home, service, about, article, contact. Say which pages reuse which template. Design is priced and scheduled by template, so this list is the scope.
The brand, as files.
The logo as a vector, the colour values, the fonts (and who holds the web licence for them), and the brand guide if there is one. A screenshot of the old website isn’t enough to design from.
Three sites the client likes, and one they don’t.
With a line on what it is about each: the spacing, the photography, the tone. “Clean and modern” doesn’t help a designer. A link with a reason does.
Real content, or its outline.
Final copy if you have it. If not, the real headline for each page, the number of services or products, and the longest item in each list. Layouts approved with placeholder text break when the real text arrives.
The platform it will be built on.
WordPress, Shopify, Webflow or custom code. Each one builds a product page or a blog template in its own way, and a designer who knows the platform will design for it.
What must not change.
A booking tool that has to stay, a legal line in the footer, a navigation the client’s board has already approved. Say it now, or it comes back as a revision round.
Who gives feedback, and how.
One person at your agency collects every comment, your client’s included, into one list per round. Name that person in the brief.
The dates.
When you need the first designs, when your client can review, and the date you have promised them. Say which of those can move.
Send the brief in writing, then walk the designer through it on one call. Anything unclear is far cheaper to settle on that call than in the second revision round.
How is outsourcing design different from outsourcing development?
Agencies often buy both from one supplier, but the two go wrong in quite different ways.
| Outsourced design | Outsourced development | |
|---|---|---|
| What you’re buying | Decisions: layout, hierarchy, how the brand looks on a screen | Execution: an approved design made to work in a browser |
| How you check it | Against the brief and the brand, by eye. Two people can disagree | Against the design, at set screen sizes. It matches or it doesn’t |
| Where it goes wrong | A thin brief, feedback from five people, a client who sees it late | Missing mobile frames, undefined states, content that doesn’t fit |
| What a correction is called | A revision round, limited in number | A defect, fixed free however many there are |
| What comes back | A Figma file | A working site on staging, and the code |
| What the price counts | Unique templates | Unique templates, plus set-up and launch |
| What slows it down | Waiting for feedback and approval | Waiting for content, logins and access |
Sending the build out as well? We cover the four supplier types, the contract and the vetting questions in the companion guide, how to outsource web development.
What should a design handover contain?
Ask one question of the file: could a developer who has never spoken to the designer build the site from it? Our Figma handoff checklist asks 78 questions of a file before we build from it, in 14 groups. Use the same list to check a file an outside designer sends you.
| Group | What it checks | Checks |
|---|---|---|
| A. File and page set-up | So the developer opens the file and knows what is final. | 8 |
| B. Frames and breakpoints | What the design does at every width, including the ones you didn’t draw. | 6 |
| C. Styles and variables | Your design tokens become the site’s CSS variables, so name them. | 6 |
| D. Components and variants | Anything used twice is built once, so it has to be one thing in the file. | 6 |
| E. Auto layout and spacing | Auto layout shows the developer how you meant things to space and resize. | 4 |
| F. Typography and font licences | The most common reason a launch waits is a font nobody has a web licence for. | 5 |
| G. Interactive states | The states nobody designed are the ones that come back in QA. | 7 |
| H. Content | Layouts are approved with placeholder text and break with the real thing. | 5 |
| I. Images, icons and export | What the developer can export from the file, and what has to be sent. | 7 |
| J. Motion and interactions | Motion can’t be read off a static frame, so write it down. | 4 |
| K. CMS and dynamic content | What your client will edit after launch, and what stays fixed. | 6 |
| L. Forms and integrations | A form is a design, a set of rules and a destination. The file usually has only the first. | 4 |
| M. Accessibility | Cheap to get right in the design, slow to fix in the build. | 6 |
| N. SEO and page structure | The basics to settle before the build starts, while they’re still cheap to change. | 4 |
In our experience, four of these get missed most often: a mobile frame for every template; the hover, focus and error states; real copy in place of placeholder text; and a web licence for every font.
One more request, and it isn’t about design: have the file created in your own Figma team instead of shared from the designer’s. Then nothing has to be handed over at the end, and you decide who can open it.
How should revisions and file ownership work?
Most arguments about outsourced design come down to one of these two. Settle both in the contract before anyone draws a frame.
Revisions
- A number of rounds, per template. Write the number down. “Reasonable revisions” means something different to each side.
- What a round is. One consolidated list from your agency, with your client’s comments in it. Five emails over three days is five rounds, or an argument about it.
- How long you have to review. And what happens to the delivery date if your client takes longer.
- What a further round costs. A price you know in advance, so you can decide on one more without negotiating.
- Where a revision ends and a change begins. Adjusting the approved direction is a revision. A new direction after approval, or a new template, is a change, and it should be quoted before any work starts.
Ownership
- Where the file lives. In your Figma team from the first day. A file you were only ever sent a link to can be closed to you.
- Who owns the designs. In many countries a contractor keeps the rights in what they make until those rights are assigned in writing. The contract should assign them to you on payment and let you pass them to your client.
- Fonts, stock images and icons. These stay under their own licences, whoever designed the page. Ask for a list, and have each one bought in your client’s name.
- Whether the designer can show it. If you sell the work as your own, the contract should say it appears in nobody’s portfolio without your written consent.
- What the file says about who made it. No supplier name on the cover, in the layer names or in the comments. Your client may be invited to that file.
Our white label agreement template has a clause for each of these. Use it as a starting draft, and get a lawyer to check it.
How much does it cost to outsource website design?
Design is sold three ways. Which one you’re quoted decides who pays when your client asks for another round.
| Model | What you pay for | Who pays for extra rounds | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hourly | The designer’s time, billed after the work | You do. Every round is more hours | Small edits to a design that already exists |
| Fixed price per template or per site | A set number of layouts, with a set number of revision rounds | The supplier, inside the included rounds. You, at a stated price, beyond them | A site with a known list of templates |
| Monthly plan | A set number of hours, or a queue of requests, each month | It comes out of the month’s hours | A regular flow of small design jobs across several clients |
We don’t list market rates here, because we haven’t found a source for them we’d trust. Send the same brief and the same list of templates to two or three designers, and compare their written quotes.
When you compare, check four things that sit outside most design prices: the number of revision rounds, whether mobile is designed or left to the developer, who pays for fonts and stock images, and whether copy is included. With us it isn’t; we can write page copy for an extra fee, quoted before we start, or you supply it.
Our prices, as one example
Our published prices for design work, all fixed, so you can see what per-template pricing looks like with real numbers.
| Item | What it covers | Our price | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Website or landing page design | One unique template in Figma, desktop and mobile, with 2 revision rounds | $200 per template | 3 business days for the first template, +2 for each extra |
| Extra design revision round | One more consolidated list of feedback, revised | $50 per template | 2 business days |
| Branding: logo & mini guide | A logo suite, a colour and type system and a short brand guide | $600 | 8 business days |
| Landing page, designed and built | One page of up to 8 sections, with the form and tracking connected | $500 | 5 business days |
| Starter Site, designed and built | Up to 5 pages from 3 unique templates, on WordPress or Webflow | $1,500 | 15 business days |
| Monthly hours | 40 team hours a month across design, development, QA and project management | $1,200 per month | Start date agreed after a capacity check |
A worked example: 5 templates
- 5 templates, design only (home, about, service, blog post and contact)
- $1,000
That’s 5 times the per-template price, with nothing added, because set-up and launch is only charged on builds. The timeline is 11 business days, on the same rule as the table above. What your client pays is up to you.
When should you not outsource web design?
Four cases where it’s the wrong call, or at least the wrong call this month.
- Design is what your agency is hired for. If clients come to you for a particular eye, keep that eye in-house and send out the build.
- The brand isn’t settled. A website can’t be designed around a logo that’s still being argued over, so finish the identity first.
- Nobody at your agency can judge the result. Someone has to say “this is right for the client” before the client sees it; if that isn’t you, find that person before you find a designer.
- Your client expects to sit beside the designer. Some do, every week. An outside designer can join calls as part of your team, but can’t sit in your client’s office.
How StudioPartner handles outsourced design
As for us: StudioPartner is a web design and development studio that works only for agencies and people who resell, inside their accounts and under their name. Each point above works like this with us, and every line is in our public Partner Agreement.
| Point | What we do | In writing |
|---|---|---|
| Revision rounds | Two rounds of consolidated feedback per unique template are in the price. A further round has a published price per template. | Acceptance and revisions |
| Review time | Each design round includes 2 business days for your review, your client’s included. A longer review moves the delivery date by the same number of days. The time we spend revising never does. | When the clock pauses |
| Changes | A new direction after approval, or an extra template, is a change. We quote it in writing within 1 business day, with the days it adds, and never start it without your written approval. | Change control |
| Where the file lives | In your Figma team from the first frame. Our designer works from an email account you create on your domain, on a seat you own and can switch off. | Working inside your agency |
| Who owns the designs | All rights in the designs pass to you once the order is paid in full, and you can pass them to your client. Until then you can review them but can’t publish them. Fonts and stock images stay under their own licences and are listed in the handover document. | You own the IP |
| Your name only | Nothing of ours is in the file: no name, link or credit. We never contact your client, and the work appears nowhere without your written consent and theirs. | Confidentiality and consent |
| AI imagery | No AI-generated imagery goes into a design unless you approve it. You can opt a project out of AI tools altogether, at no charge. | How we use AI |
| The date | A design-only order has a delivery date in the signed order, for the final files. If we miss it for a reason on our side, the whole fee comes back. | On time, or a full refund |
New to us? Your first project is paid through escrow (an independent account that holds the money) and released milestone by milestone as you approve the work. How escrow works.
- White label web design The design-only service: the file, the rounds and the price.
- Design and build together One team for the design and the build, under your name.
- White label web development You send the approved design. We build it.
- Fixed prices Every package, unit and plan, published.
Related: Branding and graphic design · Landing page design · Figma to WordPress · For creative agencies · For web agencies · Monthly design and build hours · Partner vetting checklist · A site we designed and built · Ask us a question