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Acceptance Criteria for an Outsourced Website Design Handoff
A concise acceptance record for deciding whether outsourced website design work is ready to return to the site owner.
Approval should answer whether the agreed work is complete, not whether the reviewer likes every possible variation. Write acceptance criteria that another person can inspect from the same source and rendered page.
Define the unit of acceptance
Name the route, component, or page state being accepted. Include the approved brief version, content version, source location, and known dependencies. A vague project-level approval makes it difficult to identify what still belongs in the next revision.
Cover behavior
Check the page's purpose, content, links, forms where relevant, responsive layout, keyboard path, metadata, and source-file handoff. Select only checks that apply to the unit. The outsourced website design team should state what was not tested rather than implying complete coverage.
Record exceptions
For every open item, write the owner, reason, risk, next action, and decision date. An accepted exception should be deliberate. A missing note is not approval.
Sign the right thing
The accountable owner accepts the version and its stated limits. The design team returns the final files, review record, and change summary. That evidence lets a future editor distinguish an accepted decision from an unfinished task.
Define evidence before review
An accepted page should name its route, source version, content owner, responsive review result, and known exceptions. The exact evidence depends on the page, but the rule should be visible before review begins. Keep a short note for alternatives that were considered and declined, such as a secondary action kept below the fold. That context prevents later edits from reopening settled decisions without a reason.