Agencies, clients and the tools they use say "proofing", "rounds" and "sign-off" and mean slightly different things. These are the definitions HopBack uses, written to be read on their own.
Website feedback is the set of comments, requests and approvals a reviewer gives on a website before or after it goes live. It comes from clients, stakeholders, colleagues and sometimes end users, and it covers design, copy, layout, behavior and bugs. Good website feedback names the page and the element it is about and says what should change, so the person fixing it does not have to guess. Vague feedback ("make it pop") is the most common failure, and it is usually a sign the reviewer had no easy way to point at the thing they meant. A website feedback tool collects the comments in one place, attached to the page, instead of spread across email, chat and screenshots. See website feedback examples.
Website annotation is marking a web page with notes attached to specific places on it. There are two kinds. Screenshot annotation draws on a picture of the page, with arrows, boxes and text, and is quick but fixed at one screen size and out of date as soon as the page changes. Live annotation places the note on the actual page at its URL, anchored to the element clicked, so the note carries the page, the element and the screen width without anyone writing them down. Live annotation is what website annotation tools do, and it is the form that survives a re-deploy. See how to annotate a website.
Website proofing is reviewing a website the way a printer proofs a job: a defined check of the whole thing, by a named person, with a decision at the end. It borrows the language of print proofing, where a proof is signed off before the press runs. Applied to websites, proofing means the client reviews every page at the agreed screen sizes, raises what is wrong, the agency fixes it, and the client approves a specific version. The difference between proofing and casual feedback is the record: who looked, at what, and what they agreed to. See website proofing.
A live website review is a review of the real site at its URL, loaded inside a review tool, rather than a review of screenshots or a design file. The reviewer sees the page as it is, can scroll, click and switch screen sizes, and leaves comments pinned to elements on it. Live review works on public sites, staging sites and password-protected builds, and it is the only kind of review in which a comment about the mobile menu is left on the mobile menu. See live website review.
A staging site is a private copy of a website where changes are built and checked before they go live. It usually sits on a separate address, such as staging.example.com, and is often protected by a password so search engines and the public cannot see it. Clients review on staging, the agency fixes there, and the approved version is deployed to the live domain. Reviewing on staging rather than live means comments land on the version that is about to change, and nothing half-finished is ever public. Review tools that fetch the page server-side can load a password-protected staging site without the client needing the password.
A carrot pin is HopBack's name for a comment anchored to a point on a page, design, PDF or video frame. The reviewer clicks the thing they mean and types; the pin records the element, the page, the screen width and the time, and numbers itself. Pins have threads, mentions, attachments and a status, they stay on their element when the page is updated, and they carry forward from one revision round to the next until they are resolved. Other tools call the same idea a marker, a pin or an annotation. See carrot pins.
A revision round is one complete cycle of review, changes and re-review on a project. The client reviews and comments, the agency makes the changes, and the updated version comes back for the next round. Rounds are numbered, and a proposal usually includes a fixed number of them, commonly two or three, with further rounds charged. Keeping rounds explicit is what stops a project drifting: everyone can see which round the project is in, what was raised in each, and when the agreed rounds are used up. See revision rounds and how many rounds a website project should include.
A finished review is a review that has been closed to new comments. In HopBack, finishing a review locks the round: no further pins can be added, the comments raised are the complete list for that round, and the agency can work from a fixed set of changes. A new round reopens the review on the updated version. Finishing is what turns an open-ended stream of feedback into a defined piece of work. See approvals.
Client approval is the client's explicit statement that a specific version of the work is accepted. It is a decision, not the absence of further comments. A useful approval names the version, the person approving and the time, so it can be referred back to when the question "did we agree to this?" comes up later. In HopBack the client presses Approve on the review and the approval is recorded with their name and a timestamp. See approvals.
A sign-off record is the stored evidence of an approval: who approved, what they approved, and when. It links the approval to the exact version the client saw, the comments that were raised and resolved before it, and the rounds the project went through. A sign-off record is what an agency produces when a client asks for a change after launch and says they never agreed to the current version, and it is why approvals belong in a tool rather than in an email thread. See client sign-off sheet template.
A no-account review is a review a client can take part in without creating an account or installing anything. They open a link, type a name and comment. The share link carries the permission, so there is no password to issue or reset, and the client is never asked to sign up for a tool they will use twice a year. No-account review removes the single most common reason clients fall back to email: they could not get in. See no-account review.
Device preview is switching a live website review between desktop, tablet and mobile widths without leaving the page. The site re-renders at each width, and comments placed at one width remember it, so "the menu is broken" arrives as "the menu, at 375 pixels". It is a check of layout and content at each size, not a replacement for testing on a real phone before launch. See device preview and the free responsive checker.
Artwork approval is the sign-off of a print or packaging design before it goes to production: a logo, a label, a box, a brochure. Once printed, mistakes cannot be fixed, so artwork approval is usually formal, with a named approver, a specific file version and a date. The same process applies to a website before launch, which is why website proofing borrows its language. See for print and packaging.
Design feedback is comment on a visual design, as opposed to on a live website: a logo, a mock-up, a PDF, a social graphic, a video. It is given on the file itself, pinned to the spot in question, and it goes through the same rounds and approval as a website review. Good design feedback describes the problem rather than the solution ("the headline is hard to read on the photo" rather than "make it bigger"), which leaves the designer room to fix it well. See design feedback.