Your developer is skilled, and you trust them. So should they be the one who tests their own work? The honest answer: they should test it — and you should also have someone independent check it. Here's why that isn't an insult to anyone.
The blind-spot problem
Whoever builds something knows how it's "supposed" to work, so they test it that way. They click the paths they designed, in the order they expect. Real customers don't. Builders are, by nature, the worst people to catch their own blind spots — not because they're careless, but because they're too close.
It's standard practice everywhere else
In serious software, the person who writes the code is almost never the only person who tests it. Independent QA exists precisely because self-testing misses things. Websites are no different; they've just gotten away with skipping it.
Independence changes the incentive
When you ask the builder "is it good?", the honest answer is tangled up with their pride in the work and their desire for you to be happy. An independent reviewer has no such stake. They just tell you what's wrong.
This isn't about distrust
A good developer welcomes a second set of eyes, the same way a good writer welcomes an editor. It catches problems before customers do and makes the final product better. It protects the developer's reputation as much as your business.
Think of it like a home inspection: you don't skip it because you trust the builder — you get it because even good builders miss things, and the stakes are too high to guess. That independent check is exactly what we provide.