How to Hire a Web Developer in Nigeria

There is a moment every business owner in Nigeria reaches. The Instagram page is doing okay, customers keep asking "do you have a website?", and you finally decide it is time. You open Google, type "web developer in Nigeria" and get a wall of names, portfolios, WhatsApp numbers and people who message you first. Now what?

Most of the bad hires I hear about did not happen because the developer was a fraud. They happened because the person hiring did not know what to ask, so they chose on price or on who replied fastest. Here is a better way to go about it.

First, work out which kind of developer you need

"Web developer" is a loose title, and the mismatch causes real problems. A freelancer who is brilliant at WordPress may struggle to build a wallet system. An agency that builds banking dashboards may find your five-page site boring and give it to the newest person on the team.

Roughly, you are choosing between three types.

A freelancer. Usually the cheapest and the most flexible, and you talk directly to the person doing the work. The risk is that everything depends on one human being. If they fall sick, get a full-time job or simply go quiet, your project stalls. Freelancers are a good fit for smaller, well-defined jobs.

A small studio or agency. More expensive, but more than one person can pick up your work, and there is usually a designer and a project manager involved. This suits projects that need design, development and content together.

A platform or builder. Not a person at all. If what you want is a common thing, such as a store, a booking site or a reseller platform, using something already built can cut cost and time. We make one of these ourselves, so take that with the appropriate pinch of salt, but it is a legitimate route for many businesses.

Look at finished work, then look closer

Everyone shows a portfolio. What matters is what you do with it.

Open the sites on your phone. Not on the developer's laptop screenshot. On your own phone, on mobile data. Does it load in a few seconds or do you find yourself waiting?
Click everything. Fill in a contact form. Add something to a cart. Broken buttons on a portfolio piece tell you a lot.
Check that the sites are still live. A portfolio full of dead links is a warning.
Ask what they actually did. Some people list a site they only fixed a footer on. "Which part did you build?" is a fair question.

Even better, ask if you can speak to one past client for five minutes. A confident developer will say yes. Someone hiding something will start explaining why that is difficult.

Questions that reveal more than a price

You do not need to be technical. You need to ask questions and listen to how they are answered. Try these:

Who will own the domain and the code when this is finished? The right answer is you, and the domain registered in your name. Anything vague here is a red flag.

What happens if I want changes after we launch? You want to hear about a support period, or a clear rate for extra work, not "we will see".

How will you handle payments? If you are selling anything, ask which gateway they have integrated before and whether they test failed and pending transactions, because that is where the messy bugs live.

How will the site perform on a slow connection? A developer who has built for Nigerian users will have a real answer about image sizes and lightweight pages. Someone who has only built for fast connections might not.

Can you show me a timeline with milestones? Not a promise of "two weeks". A list of what gets delivered and when.

How to pay without getting burned

It is normal to pay a deposit, often around half, before work starts. It is not normal to pay the full amount upfront for a project that has no milestones. A structure that protects both sides looks something like this: a deposit to begin, a payment when the design is approved, and the balance when the site is live and you have checked it.

Get the agreement in writing, even if it is a simple document, and pay to an account whose name matches the person or company you are dealing with. If a developer asks you to send money to a personal account for a company project, ask why. Sometimes there is an innocent reason, and sometimes there is not.

For larger projects, a proper contract that states the scope, timeline, ownership and what counts as done is worth the extra hour it takes to draft.

Warning signs worth taking seriously

Some things should slow you down: a developer who guarantees "number one on Google", since nobody can honestly promise that; a price that seems impossibly low with no explanation; pressure to pay today because of a "special offer"; no questions asked about your business (a good developer wants to know who your customers are); and a refusal to put anything in writing.

On the flip side, good signs include someone who tells you what you do not need, who asks about your customers, who pushes back gently on a bad idea and who is upfront about what they will not be able to do.

Do you need someone in Lagos or Abuja?

Not really. Plenty of excellent developers work from Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Enugu, Kano or abroad. What matters is communication and a track record, and you can meet on a video call. Being in the same city helps for some projects, particularly if you want someone to sit down with your team, but it should not be the deciding factor.

A simple way to start small

If you are nervous, do not begin with the biggest project. Give a developer one small, paid piece of work first, such as a landing page or a redesign of one section. See how they communicate, whether they hit deadlines and how they deal with feedback. Then decide about the bigger job.

And if you would rather skip the hunting, talk to our team. Tell us what you are trying to build and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right fit, or whether a simple ready-made business site would do the job for far less.

Cover photo: “Web Developer” by Christina Morillo, licensed CC0 1.0. Source.