Clients often ask what happens between "yes" and "it's live." This is the exact four-stage workflow I run on every build, refined over 120+ launches. Steal it freely.
Stage 1 — Discover & plan
Agree the goal, the audience and the stack in one short kickoff. I interview stakeholders, audit existing analytics, and fix the scope in a one-page brief: goals, audiences, pages, integrations, and what success looks like in numbers. Checklist: brief signed, content owners named, access granted.
Stage 2 — Design & build
Design the screens, then build them in clean, accessible code you can maintain. Flows first, then UI, then code — with a staging link you can open from week two. Checklist: weekly demo watched, content arriving on schedule, performance budget set.
Stage 3 — Test & QA
Automated tests, device checks and a bug-bash before anything ships: device sweep, keyboard-only run, screen-reader pass, and five-user task tests on key flows. Checklist: zero critical bugs, Core Web Vitals green, client sign-off recorded.
Stage 4 — Deploy & support
Launch to production, monitor it, and stay on call for the first month: DNS, analytics, backups, rollback plan. Then 30 days of fixes and a handover recording. Checklist: monitoring alerts on, team trained, docs delivered.
Boring? Deliberately. A checklist-driven process is what lets a one-person lab ship like an agency — and lets you see exactly where your project stands at any moment.