Website development turns an approved brief into a working system. A clear delivery process makes it easier to review progress and identify missing requirements before launch.
Choose the implementation around the work
A content-led site and a web application have different needs. A CMS can help editors maintain pages and articles. A custom application may be appropriate for account-based workflows, integrations or complex business rules. Ask how the proposed approach affects maintenance, hosting, editing and ownership rather than choosing a technology because it is fashionable.
Review a working staging site
Agree on the pages and interactions included in each delivery milestone. Review the actual implementation on a staging environment, including narrow screens, long content, empty states and validation errors. A screenshot cannot demonstrate keyboard behavior, a successful form submission or an integration failure.
Keep staging access restricted where appropriate. Decide separately which indexing rules belong on production, and test them after release.
Test the connections
List every external dependency: email delivery, analytics, CRM, payments, maps or authentication. For each integration, define the expected success behavior and what the visitor sees when the service fails. Keep test submissions identifiable so they can be removed from business reporting.
Protect existing URLs during migration
Export the old URL inventory before replacing a website. Preserve useful addresses where practical, and map moved pages to their closest genuine replacements. Removed assets and pages with no replacement can return 404; redirecting every missing address to the homepage makes troubleshooting harder and may not serve the visitor's intent.
Review canonical URLs, HTTPS, host normalization and sitemap contents together. A sitemap should list the pages you want search engines to discover, not obsolete redirect sources. See Google's site-move guidance.
Agree on acceptance and handover
Record the browser/device coverage, critical user journeys, content approvals and performance checks agreed for the project. Validate contact delivery and analytics events on the production host. Document remaining issues with an owner rather than treating launch as the end of all maintenance.
Handover should cover source access, hosting and domain ownership, deployment steps, backup recovery and update responsibilities. Include an explanation of how an editor changes content without accidentally changing indexed URLs.
If you are still defining the requirements, start with our website planning brief. For technical implementation, review custom web development and website redesign.
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