What to check before you sign off a website
The handover meeting is the last moment you have real leverage. After sign-off, everything becomes a change request, cheaper to live with than to argue about, which is how sites end up with problems nobody ever fixes.
None of what follows requires technical knowledge. All of it can be checked in an afternoon.
On your phone, first
Not on the laptop the studio is presenting from. Most of your visitors will be on a mid-range Android phone on mobile data, and that is the version that matters.
- Does it load in a few seconds on mobile data, not office wi-fi?
- Can you read every bit of text without pinching to zoom?
- Can you hit every button with a thumb, first time?
- Does anything scroll sideways? Nothing should, ever.
- Does the contact form actually submit, and does the message actually arrive?
Send yourself a test enquiry and confirm it lands in the inbox you will actually be reading. Forms that silently fail are common and can go unnoticed for months.
Content
- Is there any placeholder text left? Search the site for "lorem", "your company", "example" and "coming soon".
- Are the team members real people who still work there?
- Is every phone number, email and address correct, and do they match what is on your Google Business Profile? Inconsistency between them makes you harder to find.
- Do the legal pages say your business name, not the template's?
That last one sounds trivial. Privacy and terms pages copied from a template and never edited are extremely common, and they are the pages that mention another company's name.
Things you cannot see
Ask the studio to show you these on screen. They are quick to check and expensive to retrofit.
- Every page has its own title and description. Not the same one repeated. These are what appear in search results. - The site works with and without `www`, and one redirects to the other. Otherwise search engines see two copies of your site. - HTTPS everywhere, with `http` redirecting to it. - A sitemap exists and Google Search Console is set up, with you as an owner, not only the studio. - Analytics is installed and recording, and you can log in to it. - Images are compressed. Ask what the homepage weighs. Multi-megabyte photographs straight from a camera are the single most common cause of a slow site.
Access, the part people forget
This is the most important section on this list, and the one most often skipped. Before you pay the final invoice, confirm you own:
- The domain registration, in an account in your name that you can log into.
- The hosting account, likewise.
- Google Business Profile, Search Console and Analytics, with you as owner and the studio as a manager you can remove.
- The source code and the design files.
- Any stock image licences bought for the project.
A studio holding your domain is not necessarily acting in bad faith. It is often just convenience. It still means that changing supplier goes from a decision to a negotiation. Sort it while everyone is friendly.
What happens next
Get the answers in writing, ideally in the same email as the invoice:
- What can we change ourselves, and what needs you?
- What is included for the next three months, and what is billed?
- Who updates the platform and plugins, and how often?
- If something breaks at 9pm on a Friday, what is the actual process?
- What does a small change typically cost?
The one-line version
If you check one thing only: open it on your own phone, on mobile data, and send yourself a test enquiry. That single test catches slow loading, broken layout and a dead contact form, which between them account for most of what goes wrong with a new website.
We put our own answers to the questions above on the services page, including prices. If you are mid-project with someone else and something on this list is missing, it is still worth raising before you sign.
Questions people also ask
That you own the domain, the hosting, the analytics and the code, in accounts in your name. That every page has its own title and description. That the contact form delivers to an inbox you actually read. Those three cover most of what becomes expensive to fix afterwards.
You, in an account registered to your business that you can log into today. A studio holding it is usually convenience rather than bad faith, but it turns changing supplier from a decision into a negotiation. Sort it while everyone is still friendly.
Fill it in from your own phone, on mobile data, with a real message, and confirm it arrives in the inbox you read daily. Check the spam folder too. The success message on the page proves the browser sent the data, not that anyone received it, and silently failing forms can go unnoticed for months.
Access to every account, the source and design files, any stock licences bought for the project, a note of what your team can change without them, and what is included for the next few months. Ask for it in the same email as the invoice, while there is still a reason to reply quickly.