It can be surprisingly easy to endlessly tweak a website – more animations here, a new component there – so here’s my objective checklist of things that have to be true before I’m willing to consider a site complete, as opposed to “it looks good to me”.
Performance: The test that most sites fail
Open the site in an incognito window on a slow mobile connection (Chrome’s devtools has a nice option for this in the Network tab) and make sure it doesn’t take more than a few seconds to appear useful, as most people have very little patience in today’s world. Run the URL through Google PageSpeed Insights and take heed of their suggestions, but remember to fix the big obvious things first (large images, unused JavaScript) – both of which should be possible to resolve in under an hour.
Does it work without JavaScript doing everything?
Disable JavaScript in your browser and check if the site still conveys its basic premise. On a personal portfolio or marketing site, this should almost always be the case, and if it isn’t, you’ve probably overcomplicated something that should be much simpler in the first place. Not only does this bloat the page, but it also makes it inaccessible to crawlers (search engines) and harder to use for anyone else.
The three tap test
Take your three most important calls to action (make call, view projects, contact form, etc) and count how many taps or clicks it takes to reach them from your homepage as an uninformed visitor. If it takes more than 2-3 taps or any amount of guesswork to get there, you’re frustrating real users with questionable design decisions that could’ve been avoided.
Beyond the niceties: Accessibility
Run the URL through an accessibility tool (I personally use WAVE) and check for the big three: color contrast issues, images without descriptive alt text, and keyboard navigation problems. While it may seem like nitpicking, these issues affect real people with valid needs, and they will increasingly impact your SEO in the coming years.
What happens when someone tries to contact you?
Actually try filling out a contact form on the site yourself and make sure you receive the message, the sender gets a response, and nothing goes silently wrong along the way. It’s easy to overlook, but forms are the weak point of many websites, and their misuse (or lack thereof) can cause subtle UX issues that none of your tests would catch right away.
When is a website actually “done”?
When I can hand it to a stranger browsing on a slow mobile connection, and they can understand what the site is about and achieve its purpose in under a minute, without any further guidance from me. Any improvements past that point are purely subjective and can be tabled for later.