Web design process: the sign-off that closes each phase.

A web design process runs in five phases: discovery, wireframes, visual design, build, and testing with launch, and a twelve-page business site usually takes about three months to get through them. Each phase should end with a dated, written sign-off from one named person on the client side, because that sign-off is what turns a later change of mind into priced work instead of a favor. A process is only worth writing down when it also says what reopening an approved phase costs, and that cost rises with every phase the project has already closed.

We'll work it through one project. A five-person web agency in Portland, Maine, bills $150 an hour and is quoting Pellham Point Marina, a family-run marina in Camden with 140 slips, for a new twelve-page site with a slip rental request form. The figures are illustrative, but they all come from the same rate and the same hour counts, so every total below can be checked.

What are the steps of the web design process?

The steps are discovery, wireframes, visual design, build, and testing with launch, and the published versions mostly agree on that order while disagreeing on where to cut it. Huemor's redesign guide splits the work into seven phases, adding a pre-kickoff week before discovery and a post-launch phase after it. Mojo's guide runs five stages from the creative brief to launch, and DiviFlash's, updated in September 2026, uses six steps that end in maintenance. None of those counts is wrong, because a phase is just a stretch of work that ends in a decision, and agencies draw the lines where their own decisions fall.

For Pellham Point the agency uses five phases, each with its own hour budget at $150 an hour:

• Discovery, 14 hours ($2,100): a kickoff workshop, the questionnaire and a twelve-page sitemap.
• Wireframes, 18 hours ($2,700): gray layouts for four page templates.
• Visual design, 26 hours ($3,900): the homepage and three templates in full color.
• Build, 40 hours ($6,000): twelve pages in WordPress, the slip form and a fuel price page.
• Testing and launch, 12 hours ($1,800): checks on phones and browsers, then the move live.

That's 110 hours and $16,500, and the hour budget for each phase matters later, because it's what a change gets measured against. Discovery leans on the client's own answers, which is why the agency sends a website design questionnaire a week before the workshop rather than asking the same questions cold in the room.

How long does each phase of the web design process take?

For a twelve-page business site, plan on two weeks of discovery, two of wireframes, three of visual design, four of build and one of testing and launch, which comes to twelve weeks from kickoff to the live site. Mojo's guide puts a general business site at three to five months and a small personal site at one to two, while Huemor gives its larger redesigns four weeks of discovery and eight to twelve weeks each for the creative and development phases, so twelve weeks sits at the quick end of the published ranges for a site this size.

Most of that calendar isn't work. Pellham Point's 110 hours would fit inside three weeks if one person did nothing else, and the other nine weeks are the client reading, deciding and replying. Mojo says as much when it names slow approvals of wireframes and mockups as a reason timelines stretch, and it's worth saying plainly to the client too, because a client who thinks the agency is slow is usually looking at their own review time. The web design proposal is the right place to print the phase dates, since it's the first document the client reads with a calendar open.

What should the client sign off at the end of each phase?

The client should sign off the thing the next phase is built on, by version, with the name of the person approving and the date. For Pellham Point that means sitemap version 2 at the end of discovery, the four wireframes at the end of the second phase, homepage and template designs version 3 at the end of visual design, the built site on its staging address (a private copy only the two teams can see) before launch, and the live site after the final walkthrough.

Huemor's guide comes close to this when it says nothing moves forward until both teams are aligned, and Mojo has the client approve a version of the color mockups before the clickable prototype gets built. What both leave unwritten is what the approval actually closes. A sign-off that only says the client is happy records a mood, and it won't help anyone in week nine. A sign-off that says the marina's general manager, Ruth Calloway, approved designs version 3 on Friday, December 18, and that changes to the approved designs after that date are quoted from the rate card, is a line both sides can point at months later.

Name the approver before the project starts, too. If the harbormaster and the owner's son can both approve a design, you'll eventually get two approvals that disagree, and the website scope of work is where that one name belongs, next to the page count and the revision allowance.

How many revision rounds belong in each phase?

Two revision rounds per design phase is the usual allowance, with the price of a third written right beside it. Mojo calls the color mockups the stage with the most revisions, and that matches what most agencies see, because color is the first point at which a client reacts to how the site feels rather than how it's arranged.

Pellham Point's quote includes two rounds on the wireframes and two on the visual design, and prints a third round at $450, which is three hours at the agency's rate. Discovery gets no rounds in that sense, since the sitemap is edited in the workshop until it's right, and the build gets no design rounds at all, only fixes to anything that doesn't match the approved designs. That distinction saves a lot of arguments later on. A button that's the wrong color on the built page is a fix the agency owes, while a button the client now wants in a different color is a new decision about an approved design, and that belongs in the next section.

What does it cost to change something after a phase is signed off?

A change after sign-off costs its own new work plus the rework of every approved phase it touches, and that second number grows with each phase the project has already closed. The new work costs the same whenever the client asks for it, so the rework is the part the sign-off date decides.

On Tuesday, December 22, four days after the designs were approved, Ruth asks for a winter storage section: a page explaining haul-out and yard storage, with a form for booking a spot. The new template is 16 hours whenever it's requested, 3 to wireframe, 5 to design, 7 to build and 1 to test, so $2,400. Asked during discovery, that would have been the whole price, because nothing approved has to change and the section simply joins the sitemap.

Asked after the wireframes were signed off, the menu and the homepage layout would have to be redrawn to make room for it, which adds 2 hours and makes the change $2,700. Asked on December 22, after the designs are approved, the homepage and menu have to be redesigned as well as redrawn, which adds 4 more hours, so the rework is 6 hours and the change is $3,300. Asked after the build, rebuilding the menu, the homepage and the new form's connection to the marina's inbox would add another 5 hours for $4,050, and after launch the retesting and a second move to the live server would add 2 more for $4,350.

So the same request costs $2,400 in November and $3,300 four days after the designs were approved, and the $900 between those two numbers is the price of reopening a closed phase. The agency sends it as a change request with the price and a schedule impact of three working days, Ruth approves it the next morning, and the project moves to $19,800 with launch three working days later than planned. Mojo's guide says changes become much more difficult once the prototype is approved, which is true, but difficult isn't a price, and a client told that a change is difficult tends to hear that it's possible if they push. A client handed $3,300 and three days can decide over coffee.

What happens to the timeline when the client is late?

When the client is late with something the next phase needs, the schedule moves by the same number of days, and the process should say so before the first deadline arrives. Pellham Point owes the agency its dock photos and the season's slip rates by the end of visual design, because the build can't place either one without them.

If the photos arrive nine days late, launch moves nine days, and nobody has to negotiate it, because the proposal said each phase's start date assumes the client's inputs for it arrived on time. That's the same day-for-day mechanism a clause on project dependencies uses, and it belongs in the process because a web design process is mostly a list of handoffs between two teams. Huemor's guide takes up what the client has to supply in its FAQ, which is the right instinct, and the half still missing is what a late input does to the dates.

After launch the process ends and a different agreement starts. Huemor's includes ten business days of support before an ongoing plan, which is a sensible length, since most of the problems real visitors find turn up in the first two weeks. Whatever length you pick, give the end a date and price anything after it under a website care plan, rather than letting small fixes drift into an unpriced fourth month.

Nine hundred dollars is the price of reopening a closed phase

The line in Pellham Point's quote that does the most work is the one that turns a sign-off into a number: changes to an approved phase are quoted from the rate card as new work plus the rework of every phase already signed off. That one sentence is why the winter storage section cost $3,300, instead of $2,400, which would have given away six hours, or an argument, which would have cost the agency more than six hours.

It also changes how clients behave during the process, which most agencies don't expect. A client who knows a reopened phase has a price tends to read the wireframes more carefully the first time, because the review is where every change is cheapest. If you're still working out the hour budgets themselves, the hours behind a website price come first and the phase sign-offs sit on top of them. Docket records each change request with the price you set, sends it to the client's named approver and keeps the approval with its date, so the December 22 decision sits on file next to the December 18 sign-off it reopened.

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