Showing a Website to a Client Before It Goes Live
August 28, 2026
The normal way to show a client an unfinished site is a staging URL, and it causes a predictable set of problems every time.
Most of them come from the same root: a staging link is a real website with none of the care a real website gets.
What goes wrong with staging links
- It gets forwarded to people you did not expect, at the stage you least wanted.
- It gets indexed if the robots rules were not right, which is a bad afternoon.
- They browse the unfinished parts and judge the whole from the worst page.
- It changes under them. They look on Tuesday, you deploy, and their feedback is about a version that no longer exists.
Send a fixed version instead
A recorded walkthrough of the pages that are ready is a snapshot: it does not change under the client, cannot be indexed, and shows the site in the order you want it seen.
It also lets you present the design rather than have it discovered — the difference between a client seeing the homepage first and a client landing on a half-built contact page.
Feedback gets more specific
A staging link produces feedback like "something feels off". A sequence produces feedback attached to a step, because the client is looking at one thing at a time.
That is a materially better review, and it reduces the round trips that make client work expensive.
You still need a real link eventually
Before sign-off the client should use the actual site: click things, fill the form, check it on their own phone, break it.
The walkthrough is for the stages before that, which is most of the project. Use both, in that order.
Frequently asked questions
- Should I send clients a staging link?
- Eventually yes, for real testing before sign-off. Earlier in a project a staging link tends to get forwarded, sometimes indexed, and browsed into unfinished pages -- and it changes underneath the client, so their feedback describes a version that no longer exists.
- How do I show a client an unfinished website?
- A recorded walkthrough of the pages that are ready. It is a fixed snapshot, so it cannot be indexed or change under them, and it shows the site in the order you want it seen rather than the order they happen to click.
- Does this improve client feedback?
- Usually. A staging link produces "something feels off", while a sequence produces comments attached to a specific step, because the client is looking at one thing at a time -- which reduces the review round trips that make client work expensive.
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