Taking your website from design to development

It’s so easy to get swept up in moodboard and mockups, but eventually, someone’s got to dig into the Figma files and build it. And that’s where it gets real.

Development isn’t the final step. It’s a make-or-break moment. If the handover’s messy, the plan’s vague, or the dev team’s guessing, your dream website quickly becomes a monster.

Not all design is development friendly

That ultra-minimalist homepage with the 14 hover states, sticky nav, scroll effects, and video loops? Absolutely gorgeous. But can it actually be built cleanly, accessibly, and quickly? Probably not.

Good developers don’t kill creative, they make it functional. But only if the design’s been thought through properly, by a designer who understands what digital needs.

Design decisions = development decisions

Every design choice has a technical cost. Fonts, spacing, animations, interactions – they all impact site speed, accessibility, and content management.

If your designer isn’t thinking about how something will actually work once built, you’re setting your dev team up to fail. And trust us, they will not stay quiet about it! So do them a favour – see if there’s a way to prototype it, and make your developers a brew while you’re at it.

The earlier dev gets involved, the better

If your dev team sees the designs for the first time after sign-off, it’s already too late.
Bring them in early. Let them raise red flags, suggest better solutions, and point out where things will slow down your site – or hike up your budget. It’s not just about feasibility. It’s about building smarter from day one.

Don’t skimp on the details

Handover isn’t exporting some PNGs and dropping a few notes into Slack. It’s documentation. It’s specs. It’s structure. It’s making sure your dev has everything they need to build fast, clean, and without loads of ‘what does this bit do again?’

Design with handover in mind, and your launch will be smoother, faster, and way less stressful.

Development does not rescue bad planning

If your sitemap is vague, your components are inconsistent, and no one knows where the CMS is pulling from… your development team will build it, sure. But it won’t be pretty. Or cheap. Or stable.

Think of your lovely website builders like architects, not genies. If you put rubbish in, you’re likely to get rubbish out.

The bottom line

Great web design doesn’t mean much if the build falls apart. The development stage isn’t where your project ends – it’s where it comes to life. So plan for it. Design for it. And respect it.

Lucky for you, we don’t design a website unless we’re building it, so you can be sure what you see in the PDF is going to work – clean, fast and done right. Drop us an email or set up a call to find out how we can bring your brand to life online.