What to Expect During Your Showit Website Design Process (Step-by-Step)

If you are about to hire a Showit designer for the first time, you probably have a long list of questions. What happens after you send that inquiry? How much input do you have? When do you actually see your website? What does a revision look like? What to expect during your Showit website design process is one of the most common things prospective clients ask me, and it is the one question most designers forget to answer upfront.

I have completed over 90 custom Showit website projects for photographers, coaches, virtual assistants, and service-based businesses. In this guide I am walking you through every phase of the Showit website design process from the client side, what your designer is doing, what you are doing, what is normal, and what should raise a flag.

Why Understanding the Process Before You Sign Matters

Most website project frustrations come from mismatched expectations, not bad design. A client who shows up to launch week expecting a fully copywritten site when the contract said copy was their responsibility. A client who sends feedback three weeks late and wonders why the timeline slipped. A client who did not know revisions had a deadline and missed their window.

When you understand the Showit design process before you pay a deposit, you show up prepared. You deliver content on time. You give focused feedback. You get a better website, faster. That is the real reason this walkthrough exists.

There are also real business stakes attached to the timeline. If you are launching a new offer, rebranding ahead of a busy season, or building toward a product launch date, a website that runs 6 weeks over schedule does not just cost you money in designer fees. It costs you inquiries and sales during your peak window. Understanding what drives delays, and which phases are in your control, is how you protect your business timeline, not just the design project.

The 7 Phases of a Custom Showit Website Design Process

Every Showit designer runs their projects slightly differently, but the core phases are consistent across the industry. Here is what to expect at each one.

Phase 1: Inquiry and Discovery Call

Everything starts with you reaching out. A good designer responds within 1 to 2 business days and usually schedules a 30 to 45 minute discovery call before sending any proposal. This call is not just for the designer to sell you, it is equally for you to evaluate them.

What your designer is doing: Assessing whether your project is a good fit for their skill set, timeline, and style. Asking about your business, your target client, your brand, and what you want the website to accomplish.

What you should bring to this call:

• 3 to 5 websites you love and a note on what specifically you like about each
• A clear list of every page you think you need
• Your rough launch timeline or any hard deadlines (launches, events, rebrands)
• A sense of your budget range, a good designer will tell you immediately if it is realistic

What to watch for: A designer who skips the discovery call and jumps straight to a proposal has not understood your business. A designer who cannot explain their process clearly in plain language will not communicate well during the project either. For a full list of what to ask at this stage, see my post on 12 questions to ask before hiring a Showit designer.

Phase 2: Proposal, Contract, and Deposit

After the discovery call, your designer sends a proposal within 2 to 3 business days. The proposal outlines scope, deliverables, timeline, revision policy, and payment schedule. Read every line of this document before signing.

What to look for in the proposal:

• A clear list of pages included and any that cost extra
• Exactly how many revision rounds are included and what counts as a revision
• Who is responsible for writing copy, you or the designer
• What happens if you miss a content deadline (most contracts pause the project clock)
• The payment schedule, a typical breakdown is 50% deposit, 50% before launch

Once you sign the contract and pay the deposit, the project is officially booked. Most designers hold a start date rather than beginning immediately, especially if they are 2 to 4 weeks out on their schedule.

What to understand about pricing at this stage: A custom Showit website from a professional designer typically ranges from $2,500 to $9,000 depending on scope, experience level, and number of pages. For a full breakdown of what drives those numbers, see my post on how much it costs to hire a Showit designer in 2026.

Phase 3: Onboarding and Content Collection

After the contract is signed, your designer sends you a client portal or onboarding questionnaire. This is the most important phase of the entire Showit design process for you as the client, and it is the one that most commonly delays projects.

What your designer needs from you:

• Brand assets: Logo files (SVG or PNG with transparent background), colour hex codes, approved fonts, and any existing brand guidelines
• Website copy: Written text for every page, homepage, about, services, contact, and any additional pages in scope. This needs to be final and approved before the build starts, not a draft
• Photography: Brand or lifestyle photos, headshots, and any product or service images, exported at high resolution and organized by page
• Access credentials: Your Showit account login, domain registrar login, and any third-party tool credentials (booking software, email platform, etc.)

This phase is the single biggest predictor of whether your project finishes on time. In my experience across 90+ custom Showit builds, projects where clients deliver all content at onboarding consistently launch within the contracted timeline. Projects where content arrives piece by piece regularly run 3 to 6 weeks over schedule.

If your copy is not written yet, hire a copywriter before you book a web designer. Starting a design project without final copy is like trying to furnish a house before the walls are built.

Phase 4: Design Concept and Your First Look

With your content in hand, your designer begins building. Most professional Showit designers start with the homepage concept, a full design of your homepage in Showit including typography, colour palette, layout structure, imagery placement, and overall visual tone. This is your first opportunity to see your brand come to life on screen.

What your designer is doing: Making hundreds of small design decisions, font pairings, spacing, hierarchy, colour weight, mobile layout, based on what they learned about your brand and audience in the onboarding phase. This phase typically takes 5 to 10 working days.

What you need to do: Review the design concept carefully and give consolidated, specific feedback within the agreed window (usually 3 to 5 business days). This is not the time for small copy tweaks, focus on whether the overall direction, feel, and visual identity are right for your brand.

How to give good design feedback:

• Be specific: “The headline font feels too informal for my brand” is useful. “I don’t love it” is not
• Reference your goals: “My ideal client is a luxury bride, this palette feels too casual for her”
• Separate personal preference from brand fit: You may personally prefer darker tones but your audience may respond better to light, airy palettes
• Send all feedback in one document, not across multiple emails, voice notes, and Instagram DMs

Most contracts include one full design revision round at this phase. If you need a significant direction change after the revision round, expect it to be treated as additional scope.

Phase 5: Full Site Build

Once the homepage concept is approved, the designer builds the rest of the site. Every page is designed and built in Showit following the approved visual system from Phase 4. Each page is built for both desktop and mobile, since Showit manages these as separate canvases that each need deliberate design work.

What your designer is doing: Building, designing, optimizing images, writing alt text, setting up internal links, configuring Yoast SEO for every page (meta titles, meta descriptions, focus keywords), and testing the mobile layout. This is the longest phase of the Showit design process and typically takes 7 to 14 working days depending on the number of pages.

What you are doing: Mostly waiting. This phase involves little client input unless the designer needs a content clarification. It can feel like radio silence, and that is normal. A mid-project check-in message to your designer after 5 to 7 working days is completely reasonable if you have not heard anything.

What you should not do during this phase: Request changes to pages that have already been built. Each change at this stage cascades across desktop, mobile, and linked pages. If something important comes up, flag it immediately rather than saving a list for the end.

Phase 6: Staging Review, Revisions, and Final Sign-Off

When the build is complete, your designer gives you access to a staging version of the full site. This is your dedicated review window, typically 3 to 5 business days, to go through every page thoroughly and submit your final revision list.

How to review your Showit website properly:

• Review on both desktop and mobile, check every page on your phone, not just your laptop
• Read every word of copy on the live site, not in a document, spacing and line breaks change how copy reads
• Click every button, form, and link to confirm they go to the right place
• Check all images load correctly and none are blurry or stretched
• Submit all feedback in a single, numbered list, not in stages across multiple days

Most packages include one full revision round at staging. Your designer implements those changes and delivers a final version for your approval. Once you sign off on the final version, the site moves to launch and no further design changes are included in the original scope.

Phase 7: Launch, Handover, and What Comes After

Launch is more than pressing a button. A professional Showit designer handles the full technical launch process including domain connection, DNS configuration, SSL verification, 301 redirects from your old site (if applicable), 404 error checks, and a final cross-browser test on Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.

What happens at launch:

• Your domain is connected to Showit and DNS is updated (propagation takes 24 to 72 hours)
• The site goes live and your designer does a final walkthrough
• Your site is submitted to Google Search Console and indexed
• You receive a handover document with login credentials, platform access, and basic editing instructions

What you should receive after launch: A trained Showit user can edit their own site without touching code. A good designer spends 30 to 60 minutes walking you through how to make basic updates, swapping images, editing text, and adding blog posts. You should also receive all design files and any assets created for your project.

For a full breakdown of what is and is not included across different package tiers, see my post on what is actually included in a Showit website design package.

5 Things That Commonly Surprise First-Time Clients

Even clients who have been through web design projects on other platforms are often caught off guard by certain aspects of the Showit website design process. Here are the five things that come up most often in client feedback.

1. The copy takes longer than the design

Most clients assume the design phase will be the bottleneck. In reality, the most common source of delay is written copy. Designing your homepage takes a professional Showit designer 5 to 8 working days. Writing clear, conversion-focused copy for that same homepage, if you are doing it yourself, typically takes 2 to 4 weeks. If your copy is not ready at kickoff, your project does not move past Phase 3, regardless of how available your designer is.

2. The mobile design is a separate task, not automatic

Showit gives designers full control over both the desktop and mobile canvas independently. This means every design decision made for desktop needs a deliberate mobile counterpart. Nothing is automatic or assumed. This is actually one of Showit’s biggest advantages over other platforms, because your mobile site is as intentional as your desktop site. But it does mean Phase 5 takes longer than clients expect when they have worked with platforms that auto-adapt layouts.

3. Revision rounds have a scope, not just a number

Clients often read “two revision rounds” and assume it means unlimited small changes, twice. In practice, a revision round means one consolidated list of changes delivered in a single document, within a specified timeframe. Sending 14 separate messages over 8 days with new feedback each time is not one revision round. Your contract defines what a revision covers. Read it before Phase 4 begins so you know exactly how to use your rounds effectively.

4. DNS propagation is not instant

When your site launches and your domain is connected, it does not go live everywhere in the world simultaneously. DNS propagation can take anywhere from a few hours to 72 hours depending on your registrar and ISP. During this window, some visitors will see your old site and some will see the new one. This is completely normal and not a sign that anything went wrong. Your designer cannot speed it up. Plan your launch announcement for 48 to 72 hours after the technical go-live, not the same day.

5. You will need to maintain the site after launch

A Showit subscription requires ongoing payment to keep your site live. As of 2026, Showit plans start at around $19 per month for the basic plan and scale up based on features. Your designer builds the site but does not pay your Showit subscription. Clarify with your designer what ongoing maintenance, if any, is included after launch. Most packages include a 30 to 90 day support window for small tweaks and technical questions, after which a maintenance retainer or hourly rate applies.

Green Flags vs. Red Flags in the Showit Design Process

Not every designer runs a professional process. Here is how to tell the difference between a well-run project and one heading for problems.

Green Flags

• You received a written timeline with milestone dates at kickoff
• The designer responds to messages within 24 hours on business days
• Revision rounds are clearly defined in the contract with deadlines for your feedback
• The designer asks clarifying questions rather than making assumptions
• You have a dedicated client portal or project management space, not a trail of emails
• The designer flags scope changes in writing before doing extra work

Red Flags

• No contract, or a contract with vague language around revisions and scope
• The designer goes quiet for weeks without a project update
• Feedback deadlines are not mentioned until after you miss them
• The designer shows you other clients’ work as your design concept without customization
• Launch keeps getting pushed with no explanation
• You are charged for items that were not clearly out-of-scope in the original contract

How to Be a Great Client and Get the Most From Your Designer

Your designer controls the quality of the design. You control the quality of the inputs and the speed of the project. Here is what the best clients do differently:

• Deliver all content before the kickoff call: do not start the project clock running while you are still writing copy
• Respond to feedback requests within the agreed window: every day of delay on your end is a day added to the launch date
• Send consolidated feedback: one numbered list per round, not an ongoing stream of messages
• Trust the design expertise: your designer has seen hundreds of websites perform. If they recommend a layout change, hear the reasoning before pushing back
• Flag concerns early: if something feels wrong at Phase 4, say so. Changing direction at Phase 6 is far more expensive in time and money
• Keep stakeholders aligned before review: if your business partner, spouse, or team needs to approve the site, get their input before you submit your feedback, not after

How Long Does the Showit Website Design Process Take?

A standard custom Showit website with 6 to 8 pages takes 5 to 7 weeks from kickoff to launch. Smaller 4 to 5 page sites can be done in 4 to 5 weeks. Larger sites with sales pages, opt-in pages, and complex integrations typically run 8 to 12 weeks.

Here is how each phase maps to that overall timeline for a standard 6 to 8 page custom build:

The phases where you control the clock are Phase 3 and Phase 6. Delivering your content quickly and submitting focused, consolidated feedback in Phase 6 are the two highest-leverage things you can do to stay on schedule.

The most detailed breakdown of timelines, what causes delays, and what you can do to stay on schedule is in my separate post on how long it takes to build a custom Showit website.

What Good Communication Looks Like During a Showit Project

Communication is the part of the Showit design process nobody talks about, and it is responsible for more project failures than any technical issue. Here is what healthy project communication looks like at each stage.

Before kickoff: Your designer should tell you exactly how they prefer to communicate (email, project management tool, Slack), what their response time policy is, and who to contact if something is urgent. If this is not covered in your onboarding, ask for it directly.

During the build: Expect a brief update every 5 to 7 working days even when nothing needs your input. A message saying “Phase 5 is on track, on schedule for staging delivery on Friday” takes 30 seconds to send and prevents unnecessary client anxiety. If your designer goes more than 7 working days without contact during the build phase, follow up. That is a reasonable expectation, not a pushy one.

During review phases: You should communicate all feedback in a single, dated document, sent once. Your designer should acknowledge receipt and give you a timeline for revisions. If revisions will take longer than 2 to 3 business days, they should tell you. If something in the revision is unclear, they should ask before guessing.

At handover: Your designer should send a written summary of everything included in the handover: login credentials, platform access, files delivered, and what is included in any post-launch support period. Verbal-only handovers leave room for misunderstandings. Get it in writing.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Showit Website Design Process

What to expect during your Showit website design process as a first-time client?

Expect a 5 to 7 phase process spanning 5 to 7 weeks. You will be most active during content collection (Phase 3) and the design review phases (Phase 4 and Phase 6). The build phase (Phase 5) involves mostly waiting while your designer works. First-time clients are often surprised by how much of the timeline depends on their own content delivery speed rather than the designer’s pace.

Do I need to have my copy written before I hire a Showit designer?

Yes. A professional designer needs final, approved copy before beginning the build. Placeholder text leads to layouts that do not fit your actual words, which means expensive rework later. If you do not have a copywriter, ask your designer to recommend one, or allocate 2 to 4 weeks before your project start date specifically for copy writing.

How many revisions are included in a typical Showit design package?

Most professional Showit designers include one full revision round at the design concept stage and one full revision round at the staging review stage. Some packages include more. Read your contract carefully, “unlimited revisions” usually means unlimited small tweaks within scope, not unlimited direction changes. Anything that alters the structure of the design is typically considered a scope addition.

Can I make changes to my Showit website after launch?

Yes. Showit is a visual drag-and-drop builder, and once your designer hands over your account you can edit text, swap images, and add pages without touching code. Most designers include a training session at handover to walk you through the basics. For major structural changes or new page designs after launch, you would typically hire your designer again or purchase an add-on hour package.

What happens if I miss a content deadline during the design process?

Most professional contracts include a pause clause, if you miss a content deadline by more than a set number of days (usually 5 to 7 business days), the project is paused and your spot in the designer’s schedule is released. You re-enter the queue when your content is ready, which may mean a delayed restart if the designer’s calendar has filled. This is standard and fair. The best way to avoid it is to have all content ready before you book.

Is the Showit website design process different for photographers versus coaches?

The phases are the same, but the content requirements differ. Photographers need a large gallery of high-resolution portfolio images and a gallery plugin setup within the WordPress blog layer of their Showit site. Coaches and course creators often need sales pages, opt-in pages, and third-party platform integrations such as Kajabi or ThriveCart embedded within the Showit layout. Both approaches follow the same 7-phase process, but the complexity of Phase 3 and Phase 5 varies significantly based on these requirements.

What Does a Showit Website Design Process Look Like for Different Business Types?

The 7 phases above apply to every custom Showit project, but the content requirements and complexity in each phase differ based on what you do. Here is how the process plays out differently across the most common client types.

Photographers

Phase 3 is the most demanding for photographers. You need a curated gallery of high-resolution portfolio images organized by shoot type or client niche, a headshot, and a brand photo selection. The Showit blog layer runs on WordPress, which means the blog and gallery setup involves plugin configuration beyond the core Showit canvas. Phase 5 typically runs longer for photographer sites because gallery layout and image loading performance require additional optimization.

Coaches and Course Creators

Coaches often have the most complex Phase 3 because they need copy for multiple offer pages, an about page that tells a transformation story, and integration setup for platforms like Kajabi, ThriveCart, or ConvertKit. If you have an existing email list or funnel, your designer also needs access to those platforms to embed opt-in forms and confirmation redirects. Make sure your copy is written specifically for conversion, not just description, before Phase 3 begins.

Service Providers (VAs, OBMs, Brand Strategists)

Service provider sites are typically the most straightforward to build but the most difficult to write copy for. The challenge is differentiating your offer clearly in a crowded space. Phase 4 is especially important for service providers because the design needs to build credibility and trust through layout, not just aesthetics. Strong testimonials, a clear process section, and a case study or portfolio element need to be prepared in advance.

Retailers and Product Businesses

Showit is not designed for product businesses with large catalogues. If you have more than a handful of products, a fully custom WooCommerce or Shopify setup is typically a better fit. For product businesses with 5 to 20 SKUs, Showit with a WooCommerce integration is workable but adds complexity to Phase 5 and requires plugin setup and payment gateway configuration beyond the standard process.

The Bottom Line

The Showit website design process is collaborative, structured, and entirely predictable when both sides show up prepared. What to expect during your Showit website design process is not a mystery, it is a clear sequence of phases where your job is to deliver great inputs and responsive feedback, and your designer’s job is to turn those inputs into a website that earns you clients.

After 90+ custom Showit builds, the pattern is clear. Projects that go smoothly do so because the client understood the process before signing. Projects that drag do so because nobody set the expectations at the start. The 7-phase Showit design process works every time, when you know what your role is at each step.

If you are ready to start planning your custom Showit website, get in touch here and I will walk you through exactly what the process would look like for your specific business and scope.

About the Author

Adil Makhdoom is a Showit website designer and SEO specialist with over 90 custom Showit projects completed for photographers, coaches, and service-based businesses worldwide. He focuses on building websites that rank on Google and convert visitors into paying clients. Available on Upwork.