Design review: cutting iterations from 9 to 3 in 2024
A landing page for the Par Khorosh coffee franchise went nine review rounds and ate 47% of project margin. Three months into reworking the process, our studio averages 2.8 iterations.
Creastra Digest
- Half the revisions trace back to unclear requirements, not the client's taste
- An eight-point brief contract with references cuts taste revisions by 60%
- Two checkpoint reviews with minutes kill «let's redo everything» in 90% of cases
In December 2023 we built a landing for the Par Khorosh coffee franchise. Nine revision rounds, four «let's start over», one missed deadline. Margin collapsed from 41% to −6%. I dug into exactly what broke and over a quarter rebuilt our review process so the studio now averages 2.8 iterations.
Where 9 iterations come from
Broken down: a typical flow is 2 «taste» rounds (colour, font, mood), 3 content rounds (copy, emphasis), 2 UX rounds (block order, CTAs), 1 technical, and 1 «something shifted at the meeting». Each round eats 4–6 designer hours and 1.5 manager hours on average.
Brief contract: eight points before the first pixel
- Business goal in one sentence and the metric we score against
- Target audience with three representative personas and their objections
- Tone of voice: five «yes» adjectives and five «no» ones
- Three competitor references and three from other industries — what we like about each, by name
- Brand colour and type ranges with allowed deviations
- Required blocks with priorities 1–3
- Stop factors: what is off-limits (forms, photos, phrasings)
- Who signs off — one person, not a committee
The contract is signed before the first mock-up and fixes the iteration count at three. A fourth round is billed hourly. Sounds harsh, but seven of eight clients close in two rounds after that conversation.
Two checkpoint reviews
Between rounds one and two we insert a 30-minute review with minutes. The manager, not the designer, runs it: their job is to record decisions and check them against the brief. If the client says «let's change the font», the manager opens the brief and asks which clause we are amending. Sixty percent of the time the request withdraws itself.
Presenting the design, not «here's the file, thoughts?»
The designer presents with rationale: which job each block does and why we chose that pattern. When clients see the reasoning, they ask four times fewer questions. We script the presentation — six minutes for the home page, three for each key block.
What did not work
- Client-side voting — committees always add 1–2 rounds
- «Show three variants» — clients pick a bit of each and Frankenstein it
- Reviews without client prep — 80% of the time goes to recapping context
- Pencil sketches instead of mock-ups — feels faster but we end up making the mock-up anyway
A quarter in numbers
Across 11 projects in January–March 2024 we logged 2.8 average iterations, on-time delivery at 94%, and margin up from 26% to 39%. The unexpected upside: client NPS rose from 7.4 to 8.9 out of 10 — the process became predictable.