7 Questions to Ask a Rabat Web Agency (Before Signing)

Choosing a web agency in Rabat for a law firm, clinic, NGO or institution isn't the same as choosing one in Casablanca. Here, credibility beats spectacle, compliance beats effects, longevity beats trend. Here are the 7 questions that separate a good vendor from a bad one — and that will save you three to five years of regret.

1. How do you handle French/Arabic with RTL?

In Rabat, official bilingualism is a must for any institutional site. Yet 8 out of 10 agencies outsource it to Google Translate or implement it with display bugs (truncated text, broken RTL layouts, unreadable Arabic typography).

The right answer must include: professional Arabic translators (no machine translation on sensitive pages), full RTL layout mirroring, appropriate Arabic font choices (kerning, ligatures), user testing on both versions. If your vendor has no properly RTL Arabic site in their portfolio, switch vendors.

2. Are you compliant with Law 09-08 and GDPR?

Law 09-08 (2009) on personal data protection applies to every Moroccan site collecting data. GDPR applies as soon as you target or process EU resident data. In Rabat, with international organizations and multi-country NGOs, both regimes often coexist.

The right answer must include: compliant consent banner (not just aesthetic), legal notices and privacy policy drafted by a lawyer (not generic templates), forms with explicit legal basis, consent logging, documented right of access and erasure procedure. If the agency answers "we add a cookie popup", run.

3. Do you deliver RGAA level AA for public and parapublic sites?

RGAA (French General Accessibility Improvement Reference) level AA is mandatory for public and parapublic institutional sites. It's not optional — it's a French law increasingly shaping Moroccan standards.

The right answer must include: tested WCAG AA contrasts, full keyboard navigation, ARIA labels, media transcription, real VoiceOver/NVDA/JAWS testing (not just automatic axe-core), and above all the accessibility declaration and multi-year roadmap ready to publish. Without these two documents, your site isn't compliant even if the code is.

4. Where do you host sensitive data?

For health, HR, legal or child-related data, data sovereignty is critical in Rabat — where many organizations process sensitive files under state supervision.

The right answer must specify: encryption at rest (AES-256), encryption in transit (TLS 1.3), access logging (who saw what, when), encrypted backups with monthly restore testing, and the physical server location (Morocco, EU or USA). Some files explicitly require non-US hosting (to avoid the Cloud Act).

5. What happens to my SEO during a redesign?

A Hassan law firm or a Souissi clinic may have 5 to 10 years of accumulated ranking. A poorly managed redesign wipes everything — and Google will take 6 to 18 months to put you back where you were.

The right answer must include: prior SEO audit (ranked keywords, traffic-generating pages), 301 redirect plan item by item, canonical tag mapping, preservation or migration of strategic URLs, and post-launch monitoring over 3 months minimum with adjustments. If the agency says "we'll redo it all, it'll be better", be suspicious.

6. How do you guarantee 5 to 10 year longevity?

Rabat institutions don't change their site every 2 years. Your site must live 5, 7, sometimes 10 years. That means specific technical choices: no marginal framework that will disappear, no abandoned plugins, documented code, up-to-date dependencies, solid hosting.

The right answer must include: proven stack (Laravel, WordPress LTS, Next.js), delivered technical documentation, clear and reasonable maintenance contract (no hidden rent-seeking), possibility of takeover by another vendor (clean code, full access), and at least a monthly security update plan.

7. Who are your real Rabat references?

A portfolio site isn't enough. You must be able to call a client who has worked with the vendor. For Rabat, demand references comparable to your sector: law firm for a law firm, clinic for a clinic, NGO for an NGO. The stakes differ too much between sectors to transpose.

The right answer must include: at least 2-3 phone-verifiable references in your sector, access to delivered sites (concrete URLs), and if possible a direct exchange with a former client before signing. An agency that refuses to give you access to its references is worth what it's hiding.

In short

The Rabat market is more demanding than it seems — credibility builds slowly and breaks fast. Take the time to ask these 7 questions to every competing agency, and above all listen to what isn't said. A good agency answers without hesitation, with precision, documentation on hand. A bad agency will dodge or drown in jargon.

Our dedicated Rabat offering covers all these points by default. You can also request a free audit of your current site to identify what's missing before even launching a redesign.