Client Onboarding Checklist for Web Designers

A client onboarding checklist for a web designer is a short list of things to confirm before design starts: who approves, what is in and out of scope, what the client must supply and by when, how you will communicate, how many revision rounds are included, and how you get access without being sent passwords. Do it in the first week and put it in writing.

What should a web designer's client onboarding checklist include?

Eight things cover most projects. Each one exists because its absence is a common reason for a project to slow down or turn into an argument.

Onboarding checklist for a website project
Confirm	What to write down	What goes wrong without it
One approver	The name of the person who gives final sign-off.	Feedback arrives from three people and contradicts itself.
Deliverables	Each page or file, with a checkable acceptance criterion.	"Finished" means something different to each side.
Exclusions	What is not included: copywriting, photography, an online shop, ongoing edits.	Exclusions get discovered halfway through as "I assumed you would."
Assets and dates	Each item you need (logo, copy, images, access) with a due date.	You wait, the launch date slips, and it becomes your delay.
Revision rounds	How many rounds are included and what counts as one.	Endless small tweaks with no way to price them.
Communication	Where you talk, and how fast you reply in working days.	Urgent messages land in the wrong channel.
Access method	How you will be invited to accounts, with the lowest role that works.	Passwords get pasted into email or chat.
Key dates	Kickoff, first review, final approval, launch.	Nobody can tell whether the project is late.

When should onboarding happen?

Right after the quote is accepted and any deposit is arranged, before you open a design tool. The client is at their most engaged then, and every answer you collect now is one you will not have to chase later. A single message plus a one-page brief usually does it; a call is optional and its outcome should still be written down afterwards.

How do you collect client assets without chasing?

Give every item a name, an owner and a date, and say in advance what happens if it is late. Chasing feels awkward mostly because the consequence was never agreed.

List what you need in one place: logo files, brand colours, page copy, photos, domain and hosting details, legal text such as a privacy notice.
Mark which items block which milestone, so the client can see why a date matters.
Set one date per item, not "as soon as you can."
Agree the fallback: either you use clearly marked placeholders and swap them later, or the milestone date moves.
Send one reminder per overdue item, naming the item and the two options.

Offering the client the choice between placeholders and a later date keeps the decision with them and keeps you from guessing.

How should you get access to a client's accounts?

Do not ask for passwords. Ask the client to invite you from inside their own account (domain registrar, hosting, analytics, social profiles) with the lowest role that lets you do the job. The invitation is traceable, revocable and does not leave a password sitting in an inbox.

Write the removal date into the plan on day one. At handoff, remove your own access so the client ends up holding their accounts; the kit's handoff checklist ends with exactly that step.

Who approves the work, and what if there are two decision makers?

Name one approver. If a client has a partner, a board or a marketing lead who also has opinions, the client can collect them first and send you a single consolidated reply. Say this plainly: "I will treat [name] as the person who gives final sign-off. If that changes, tell me." Without it, the last email wins, and the last email is often the loudest, not the most authoritative.

What should you tell the client about revisions?

Tell them how many review rounds the price includes and what a round is: one consolidated set of feedback on one version. Also say how you will treat a request that goes beyond the brief. If it adds a page, a feature or a new integration, it is a scope change and gets priced before you start. The scope change log guide shows how to record that decision without it feeling like an accusation.

What does a good onboarding message look like?

This is adapted from the Onboarding script in the kit. Replace everything in square brackets.

Subject: Getting started: [Project name]

Hi [Client first name],

Thanks for confirming [Project name]. Here is how the next few weeks will work.

What I need from you: the items on the attached checklist. The most important are [item 1] and [item 2], needed by [date].
Who approves: I will treat [Approver name] as the person who gives final sign-off. If that changes, tell me.
Where we talk: I will reply to emails within [number] working days. For anything urgent, use [channel].
Feedback rounds: the plan includes [number] rounds of changes on each deliverable. Anything beyond that, or outside the agreed list, I will price separately before doing it.
Access: please do not send me passwords. Where I need access to an account, invite me from inside the account with the lowest role that works.

First milestone: [milestone] on [date].

Thanks, [Your name]

What are the most common onboarding mistakes?

Treating the quote as the brief. A price is not a list of deliverables. Write the deliverables and the exclusions separately.
Verbal agreements only. If it was decided on a call, send three lines afterwards confirming it.
Undated asset requests. "When you have it" has no deadline and therefore no consequence.
Vague approval. "Looks good" in a chat thread is not clearly sign-off on a named deliverable.
Collecting passwords. It is convenient once and costly the one time it goes wrong.

A checklist cannot make a client responsive or a brief complete; it makes the gaps visible early, when they are cheap to fix. It is also not a contract. Terms you agree with clients should be reviewed by your own adviser.

How does the Client Delivery Kit cover onboarding?

I built the kit so the points above live in files you reuse. The Client Delivery Kit has an Inquiry sheet with six fit questions, a Brief sheet with acceptance criteria and exclusions, a 15-item Assets checklist with dates, and the Onboarding and Missing assets scripts. The Quote worksheet and Launch QA checklist are available as a free sample, and the documentation walks through setup. The files are plain templates; I recalculated the workbook in LibreOffice and checked it against an independent calculation, but did not open it in Excel or Google Sheets before release.