Acceptance is not the same as liking it
Sign-off is not a taste decision. A layout can be attractive and still unusable: it may have no answer for a long product name, an empty catalogue, or where the button goes on a narrow screen. Those things do not surface in a presentation. They surface a month into operation.
It helps to split acceptance into three moments that follow the project stages. Each checks something different, and whatever is skipped early costs more later.
Accepting the structure
The cheapest stage to change and the one most often waved through. What matters is not beauty but sequence: the path a visitor takes, the order in which they get the argument, and where they can reach you.
Useful questions: what does someone see first, and is it enough to know where they have landed; how many steps to an enquiry; are there pages nothing links to. Check the last one literally — a section with no path from the menu or the body copy is largely invisible to search engines too.
Accepting the design
Here you review states, not pictures. Every screen has more than one and usually only the happy one is drawn.
- What the page shows with no data: empty catalogue, no reviews, no photograph.
- How the longest product or service name behaves.
- What the form does on error, and what the visitor sees after submitting.
- How each block behaves on a narrow screen — not "is there a mobile version" but what happens to this block specifically.
If those have no layouts, the developer will invent them, and you will see the result already built.
Accepting the live site
Check on the real URL, on your own phone, in the browser you actually use. The minimum round:
Substance. Prices, service names, company details, phone numbers, people. This is the one thing a contractor cannot verify — they do not know which price is right.
Enquiries. Send a test enquiry and confirm it reaches someone who reads it. Try every channel: form, messenger, phone. While you are there, check the goal fired in analytics — what should be in place is covered in analytics before launch.
Speed. Open the homepage on mobile data, not office wifi. The gap between those two checks is usually the gap that costs you visitors.
Small copy. The browser tab title, button labels, the footer line, the 404 page. These never appear in a design presentation and therefore reach production in draft form.
Collect it while you have leverage
The payment moment is the easy time to get everything. Collect the design sources, repository access, and credentials for the domain, hosting and every connected service, plus a short guide for updating content. If any of that stays with the agency, you are tied to them by default rather than by choice.
Agree the warranty window in the same conversation, including where the line falls between a defect and a new request. That line is almost always contested, and it is calmer to draw it before payment than in the moment something breaks. Choosing a contractor in the first place is covered in redesign or rebuild.
