The review
What is opened, what is written down, and where each check stops
A review is worth having only if you know its edges. Each of the six checks below is set out three ways: what is actually done, what that turns into in the report, and the point beyond which it does not go.
The six checks
In detail
The same six in every package. The package decides how many pages, forms and browsers they are carried out across.
Links
What is done
Every link on the agreed pages is opened: menu links, links inside the text, buttons, the footer, and links that lead off your site.
What is reported
Each broken link with the page it sits on, the words it was attached to, and what happened when it was opened.
Where it stops
Links on pages outside the agreed list are not opened, and a link that works now can be broken later by a change to another site.
Forms
What is done
Each form covered by your package is filled in and sent twice: once completed properly, and once with a required field left empty, to see what the form says about it.
What is reported
Whether the form sent, what it showed afterwards, and which fields accepted or rejected what was typed into them.
Where it stops
Whether the message reached your inbox can only be reported if you tell me it arrived: the review can see the form send, not your mailbox.
Placeholders
What is done
The agreed pages are read for filler text, sample images, template captions, demo product names and anything that was written to be replaced later.
What is reported
Each one quoted, with the page and the section it is in, so it can be found without hunting.
Where it stops
Text that is deliberate but reads like filler is flagged as a question rather than as a fault.
Empty and unfinished blocks
What is done
Sections with nothing in them, images that do not load, headings with no text under them, sentences that stop, and details that contradict each other from one page to the next.
What is reported
Each block with the page, what is missing, and whether it is empty or only half filled.
Where it stops
What the missing text ought to say is not written for you. The review says where the gap is.
The report
What is done
The checklist is filled in line by line, and every finding is written down with where it is, what is wrong and how urgent it is.
What is reported
Two documents in one file: the checklist with a status against every line, and the findings ranked "Fix before launch", "Worth doing" or "Check with you".
Where it stops
The ranking is a recommendation. What you launch with is your decision.
Before a review can start
What has to come from you
Six things. Until they are settled the review has no scope, and a review without a scope is an argument waiting to happen.
The address
Where the pages can be opened. A staging or preview address is fine. If the site sits behind a password or a holding page, something is needed to get past it: a preview link carrying its own token, or a temporary viewer-level account you can switch off afterwards. No admin login is ever asked for, because nothing on your site is changed.
A safe way of handing that access over
A password must never travel in the body of an ordinary email: it then sits in two mailboxes and in every backup of both. Use a one-time secret link that destroys itself once it has been read, or your password manager’s share function, or send the username and the password by two different routes. Whatever arrives is used for the review and nothing else, is never written into the report, and is deleted within 7 days of the report being sent. Switch the access off or change it afterwards in any case.
The list of pages
Written down, one address per line. That list is the scope of the review and the thing the price is agreed against, so a page that is not on it is not opened.
The forms and what they are for
Which forms are covered, and what should happen after each is sent, so that a form which behaves oddly can be told apart from one behaving as you intended.
The date you mean to go live
It decides whether the turnaround of a package fits at all. If it does not, you are told before anything is agreed rather than afterwards.
Anything you already know about
A page still being written, a form that has never worked, a section waiting on a photograph. Known faults are noted as known rather than reported back to you as news.
The deliverable
The report, printed in full
This is what arrives at the end: a checklist with a status on every line, and the findings behind the lines that are not clear.
Pre-launch review — https://www.example.com
- Site reviewed
- a five-page site with one enquiry form
- Package
- Small Site Launch Review, £120
- Pages on the agreed list
- 5: Home, Menu, About, Contact, Delivery
- Forms
- One: the enquiry form on Contact
- Browsers and widths
- One browser, at two screen widths
- Findings
- 8
Part one — the checklist
- Links2 to fix before launch
- Forms1 to fix before launch
- Placeholders2 to fix before launch
- Empty and unfinished blocks2 to look at
- Navigation1 to fix before launch
- The reportWritten and sent, 8 findings listed
Part two — the findings
8 findings in all: 6 ranked Fix before launch, 1 ranked Worth doing, 1 ranked Check with you.
| Ref | Page | What was found | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| F1 | Home | The "Book a table" button has no address behind it. Pressing it jumps to the top of the same page. | Fix before launch |
| F2 | Menu | Three dishes carry the words "Description to follow" where the description should be. | Fix before launch |
| F3 | About | The second paragraph is the template’s Latin filler text, beginning "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet". | Fix before launch |
| F4 | Delivery | The link labelled "Returns" opens a page that does not exist, and the address it points at has a full stop on the end of it. | Fix before launch |
| F5 | Contact | The enquiry form sends, then returns to the same page with every field still filled in and nothing on screen saying whether the message went or not. | Fix before launch |
| F6 | Home, Contact | The footer gives one email address and the Contact page gives a different one. Which is correct is a question for you, not a fault I can settle. | Check with you |
| F7 | Menu | At the phone width the menu lists "Menu" twice, one entry under the other, and both lead to the same page. | Fix before launch |
| F8 | Home | At the phone width the space under the opening heading is empty: the image beside it does not load and nothing takes its place. | Worth doing |
Priorities are a recommendation, not an instruction: what you launch with is your decision. None of the findings above are repaired as part of a review. The report says where each one is, and the repair goes to whoever built the site.
The other side of the list
What a review does not do
The full list, repeated here so that it is never more than one page away from the price.
- Fixing anything that is found. The review reports; the repairs are yours to make or to commission, and they are not covered by the fee.
- A promise that every fault has been found. One person checks agreed pages at an agreed moment, in the browsers your package covers. Faults outside that, and faults that appear afterwards, are outside the review.
- A certificate, badge, seal or approval. Nothing is issued to display on your site, because a review is not a certification.
- An opinion on your design, your photographs or the way your copy is written.
- A speed, security or accessibility audit. Those are different jobs with different tools.
- A legal check of your policies. The review can say that a page is missing or that a link to it is broken; it cannot say whether its wording is right for your business.
- Any change to your hosting, domain, content management system or DNS. No admin login is asked for and none is needed.
- Pages added, rebuilt or renamed after the page list was agreed.
Send the address and the page list
The counts are checked, the package is confirmed in writing, and nothing is due until you have agreed to the figure.