Client onboarding checklist for digital and web agencies

In short

Last updated 2026-09-06

A digital agency collects three different things at onboarding and they arrive at different speeds: the commercials, which are quick; brand assets and system access, which need someone technical at the client; and the page-by-page content, which is always the bottleneck. Separating them stops the fast items waiting behind the slow ones.

Grouped by who at the client has to act. The commercials need a decision-maker, access needs whoever holds the accounts, and the content needs whoever writes. Sending one list to one contact is why projects stall at the content stage with everything else already done.

24 items, 3 stages

What to collect before a build starts

A checklist belongs to one person. If the finance contact signs and the marketing manager writes, give them a list each rather than one shared link.

Commercials and sign-off

Before any work begins

  • Signed proposal or statement of work

    The scope everything else is measured against. Countersigned, not just verbally agreed.

  • Deposit payment confirmation

    Proof the first invoice is settled, which is usually what triggers the start date.

  • Billing contact and purchase order

    Who invoices go to and any PO number their finance team requires. Chasing this after the first invoice is the most avoidable delay in the project.

  • Named approver and the sign-off process

    One person who can say yes. A project with three approvers and no tiebreaker will revise forever.

  • Launch date and any fixed constraints

    Campaign dates, event deadlines, contract expiries on the current hosting — the things that cannot move.

Brand assets and access

In the first week

  • Logo files in vector format

    SVG, EPS or AI. A PNG lifted from the current site will not scale and cannot be recoloured.

    Varies by country. ChaseDocs accepts PDF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, Word and Excel up to 25 MB, and refuses SVG, ZIP and design-tool files. Collect the confirmation and the transfer link here, and move the assets themselves through your file transfer of choice.

  • Brand or style guide

    Colour values, typography, spacing and tone. Where none exists, say so now rather than discovering it at design review.

  • Brand fonts and their licences

    The licence matters more than the file. Many desktop font licences do not cover web embedding, and buying the web licence is the client's cost, not yours.

  • Photography and image library

    The images they want used, with confirmation they hold the rights to use them on a public website.

  • Image licences and model releases

    For stock imagery and for photographs of identifiable people. Ask who holds the licence and what it covers before anything is published.

    Varies by country. The rules on using a recognisable person's image, and on cookie or tracking consent for embedded media, differ by jurisdiction.

  • Domain registrar access

    Who the domain is registered with and who controls it. Discovering at launch that it is in a former employee's personal account is common and costs days.

  • DNS and hosting control

    Where DNS is managed and where the current site is hosted. Often two different providers, and often not the ones the client believes.

  • CMS and admin access to the existing site

    For content migration and to see what actually exists rather than what is linked.

  • Analytics and Search Console access

    Baseline traffic and search performance before you change anything. Retrofitting a baseline after launch is impossible.

  • Third-party accounts to be connected

    Email marketing, CRM, booking, payment gateway, live chat, review platforms — a list of what must keep working after launch.

Content and copy

The bottleneck — start it earliest

  • Approved sitemap

    Agreed page structure before design. Adding pages after layouts are signed off is where scope creep starts.

  • Page-by-page copy

    One item per page rather than one document for the whole site, so a client who has written three pages can send three pages instead of waiting to send all twelve.

  • Product or service descriptions

    Names, descriptions, pricing and any variants, in a structured form rather than prose.

  • Team biographies and photographs

    Consistently framed, and confirmed with each person before publication.

  • Testimonials and case studies

    With written permission to publish each one, including any client logo used alongside it.

  • Legal pages

    Privacy policy, terms of use, cookie policy and any sector-specific notices, supplied by the client.

    Varies by country. What these must contain depends on where the client operates and where their customers are. This is their lawyer's work — collect the pages, do not draft them.

  • Contact details and locations

    Addresses, phone numbers, opening hours and the email addresses that form submissions should reach.

  • Reference sites they like and dislike

    Three of each, with a sentence on why. Faster and more useful than any adjective in a brief.

  • Existing brand or campaign material

    Brochures, decks and one-pagers. Often contains the best copy the client has already written and forgotten.

This is a general checklist, not a legal requirement

The legal pages a site needs, and what has to be in them, depend on where the client operates and where their customers are — cookie consent, privacy notices and accessibility obligations differ substantially between jurisdictions. Those pages are the client's lawyer's work, not yours, and this checklist collects them rather than specifying them.

Treat it as the starting list to adapt, not a rule to rely on. The authority that will actually assess the file is the one whose current published requirements decide it.

Collect this over WhatsApp

Stop the content stage from becoming the project

The commercials arrive in a day. The copy arrives in six weeks, one page at a time, after four reminders. Structuring the ask is most of the fix.

  • Build the list once as a template, reuse it for every client.
  • One link per person, sent over WhatsApp or email, with no login and no app.
  • Reminders chase what is missing and cancel themselves when it arrives.
  • Each upload is checked on arrival, then filed into your own cloud storage.
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Client onboarding questions

What should a web agency collect before starting a build?

Three things, and they move at three different speeds. The commercials — signed scope, deposit, billing contact, named approver — usually arrive within a day. Brand assets and system access take a week and need whoever actually controls the accounts, which is often not your main contact. Page-by-page content takes as long as you let it and is the reason projects overrun. Ask for all three at once, in one structured request, but treat them as separate items so the fast ones do not sit behind the slow ones.

Why does client content always arrive late?

Usually because it is asked for as one lump. "Send us the copy for the site" is a task with no obvious first step and no visible end, so it gets postponed. One item per page changes it into twelve small tasks, each of which can be finished and ticked off, and it lets a client who has written three pages send three pages rather than waiting until all of them are done. It also means your reminders can name what is still outstanding instead of asking again for everything.

Should clients send passwords through a document request?

No, and no collection tool is the right place for credentials — ChaseDocs included. Ask for named access instead: an invitation to the CMS, an added user on the analytics property, delegated access on the registrar. Where a shared secret genuinely cannot be avoided, use a password manager with a sharing feature. A password in a document upload, an email or a chat thread is a password you now have to worry about for the life of the relationship.

Can ChaseDocs collect logo and design files?

Partly, and it is worth knowing the boundary before you plan around it. ChaseDocs accepts PDF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, Word and Excel up to 25 MB per file. It refuses video, ZIP archives, PSD, AI and InDesign files, fonts and SVG. So it is the right tool for the copy, the briefs, the legal pages, the photographs and the confirmations — and the wrong tool for a 2 GB asset handover, which should go through a file transfer service with the link collected as a checklist item.

Who should the checklist be sent to?

Whoever can actually complete each part. A checklist in ChaseDocs belongs to exactly one contact, so if the finance director signs the scope and the marketing manager writes the copy, give them a list each rather than one shared link. It is faster, and it avoids sending the marketing manager the commercial terms.

More lists like this on our checklists index, or read For digital agencies.

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