Website Design Handoff Checklist

A design handoff is successful when the team building the site can understand the intended behavior, content, constraints, and acceptance conditions. A polished mockup without those details shifts uncertainty into development.

State the page purpose

Record audience, business goal, primary action, secondary actions, content source, service or product scope, and success measure. Keep the design connected to the customer's decision.

Include content and data states

Provide real or representative copy, long titles, missing images, empty results, errors, permissions, loading, success, and mobile states. Do not hand off only ideal placeholder content.

Document interactions

Explain navigation, filters, dialogs, forms, focus, hover, keyboard behavior, validation, animation, responsive changes, and links. Note which behavior is required and which is exploratory.

The QA checklist and design system checklist provide useful acceptance questions.

Package assets and ownership

Include image rights, fonts, icons, logos, source files, tokens, component examples, content owner, approver, and licensing notes. Keep the business's access to project files and accounts.

Confirm before development

Review open questions, dependencies, integrations, performance, accessibility, privacy, analytics, browser support, and definition of done. Assign a person to resolve each unresolved decision.