How to commission a website without paying for rework
A reliable website project begins with a business outcome and an acceptance method, not a colour palette or a page count.
Start with the job
Name the primary visitor action, the audiences, traffic sources and information needed to complete it. A useful opening brief also records mandatory integrations, owner, target date and an honest budget range.
Record success measures and the person authorised to resolve scope questions, so design decisions do not wait for a committee.
Compare equal responsibilities
Ask each supplier to list stage deliverables, exclusions, content ownership, browser testing, account ownership and post-launch support. A lower total often excludes copy, mobile layouts, migration or analytics.
Request named deliverables and acceptance conditions in the estimate; labels such as “development” conceal very different amounts of work.
Approve evidence at every stage
Review the sitemap and journeys before visual design, and test production-like content before development is declared complete. Real copy exposes layout and information problems that placeholders conceal.
Use real copy, forms, tables and error states during review because these expose constraints that polished presentation screens omit.
Accept the complete handover
Test the main journey on a phone, confirm lead delivery and analytics, and receive domain, source, design, administration, backup and third-party service access before final payment.
The handover should also list recurring services, renewal owners and recovery instructions, not merely provide a compressed source archive.
Need an estimate for your project?
Tell us about the project. We will break it into stages and explain the budget drivers.