Review the decision, not just the code

A useful review explains what matters, why it matters and what to do next.

Website, product, search and usability reviews help a team choose the next sensible work without turning every observation into a crisis.

1. Establish the job

Before measuring screens or pages, establish the outcome, priority journeys, operating constraints and evidence already available.

  • Customer and product priorities
  • Current technical and delivery constraints
  • Evidence already available

2. Follow the real journey

Review whether a first-time user can understand the offer or task, make the required decisions, recover from problems and reach the intended outcome on relevant screen sizes.

3. Check the foundations

Depending on scope, inspect product behaviour, content, responsive presentation, accessibility observations, integration boundaries, crawl access, metadata and search evidence supplied by the customer.

4. Separate findings from recommendations

A finding records what can be observed. A recommendation explains a proportionate response. Priority depends on customer impact, confidence, effort, risk and dependencies.

5. Verify important changes

Material fixes should be rechecked through the real journey and against the evidence that justified them. Completion means confirming the intended behaviour, not only changing code or copy.