WordPress agencies are not interchangeable. One will leave you a maintainable CMS. Another will leave you a page-builder canvas, twenty unused plugins, and demo copy that still says another company’s name. The difference is visible in the first week if you know where to look.
Ask how content is modeled
If every page is a unique snowflake of builder rows, your editors will need the agency forever and your templates will fight SEO. Structured content types, a real navigation, and a child theme (or a purpose-built theme) are signs of adult work. Builders are fine when they are the editorial model you chose — not the default because the theme demo looked impressive.
Plugin and security hygiene
Ask for the plugin list and why each one exists. Unused WooCommerce on a marketing site is dead weight. A plugin that hides itself from the plugin screen is an incident, not a feature. Updates, staging, and a documented admin user list should be boring. If the agency cannot explain how they would recover from a compromised admin, they should not be on the internet with your brand.
Performance and SEO are launch criteria
Titles, meta descriptions, sitemaps, and honest copy are not “phase two.” Neither is image weight. WisdomSol’s WordPress service and SEO service exist because we have cleaned up too many launches that skipped both. WooCommerce is a commerce product, not a checkbox; if you need it, staff it like commerce.
Handover means the repo, the environments, and a walkthrough your internal developer can survive. If the only way to change a footer phone number is a paid ticket into a proprietary builder, you do not own the site.