What are the day-to-day front-end development deliverables?

A front-end team doesn't hand over a finished interface only at the end of a project – it produces a series of reviewable outputs throughout the delivery process: working components, tested code, documentation, and performance data that you can check against what was agreed.

This article breaks down what those outputs actually are, so that, as a buyer, product owner, or delivery lead, you know what to expect, how to verify it's actually done, and which parts depend on the scope you agree with your provider.

Front-end services: meaning

When describing what front-end developers do in regard to creating a website or web app, one usually mentions the "look" and "feel" of said digital solutions. In software development-speak, it means appearance and functionality. So if you're trying to pin down what front-end development is in an app project – it's the sum of everything your users see and interact with on the client side.

Front-end development is the work of turning approved interface decisions into a working, browser-based product, built with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and their respective frameworks. That's a distinct activity from UI/UX design itself: design may come from the same vendor building the front end, be supplied by the client, or be handled by a separate team. Wireframes and prototypes only count as front-end deliverables when design is explicitly part of the agreed scope – a point covered in more detail below.

Ultimately, front-end services involve handling the design and development of elements and content directly visible to users of your solution, i.e., the client side of the application.

Merge's front-end development services cover new websites and web applications, as well as modernization of existing front ends.

To explain this even further, let's list some of the main developer duties:

• Shaping and coding the structure and design of web applications and web pages;
• Using markup languages to write web pages;
• Working alongside the UX/UI design team to check if design choices match the established user experience and also preserve brand consistency across all design systems;
• Optimizing the web solution for smartphones and other non-PC devices;
• Maintaining the product while issuing upgrades when necessary.

Front end vs. back end vs. full stack

Front-end work covers more than what's visually noticeable to the user. It includes browser-side rendering, interaction logic and state management, form behavior, accessibility, performance, testing, and the connections that pull data in from APIs.

The back end, by contrast, covers server-side business logic, data storage, authentication, background services, and the infrastructure that keeps all of it running.

Full-stack development combines both. That can mean one specialist working across the whole stack, or a team where front-end and back-end responsibilities are split but coordinated, and neither setup gives either side an inherent advantage over the other.

Main frontend deliverables

What are deliverables in the first place? In project management, where this term originated, a deliverable is the actual results from any project phase that you can either present to your clients or use internally to drive the workflow. 

Whether you're reviewing a broad software development deliverables list or narrowing it down to website development deliverables specifically, the results can be either internal or external – usually a report, a design, a setup, or any other part of the project requirements.

By adding the need to adjust your websites and web apps for different devices, the website deliverables have naturally changed as well. Frankly speaking, the whole bunch of deliverables can also vary depending on what web project you're creating, be it a web application, a dynamic website, or perhaps a less dynamic, more "portfolio-style" one.

However, a few definitive, somewhat tangible outcomes are pretty much constant in most projects. The table below gives a quick overview before we dive into each one.

What day-to-day front-end delivery looks like

During active delivery, a client or product team typically has visibility into work well before final handoff. That can include completed components or small feature increments pushed to a branch or staging environment, pull requests and their code-review outcomes, automated test results and QA findings, and demos of completed states and responsive behavior. Written updates to acceptance criteria, technical decisions, known blockers, and documentation usually accompany the code itself.

None of this happens on a fixed daily schedule by default. How often you see it, and in what form, depends on the engagement model and the workflow agreed with your provider — a team on two-week sprints reviews differently than one shipping continuously to a staging environment. What stays constant is that front-end work produces reviewable outputs throughout a project, not only at the end.

Here they are in more detail.

User interface

Design-related deliverables include wireframes and prototypes of the whole user interface of the app or site. Visual design deliverables, aside from being part of the project roadmap, serve to showcase design outcomes to stakeholders. High-quality prototypes then become a reference when coding.

Wireframes and prototypes are deliverables only when UI/UX design is part of the agreed scope. In many projects, the client provides the design (for example, as Figma files or a style guide), and this design serves as input for the development team rather than as a deliverable produced by it.

Responsive components

Responsiveness in front-end UI means being able to adapt to any device and screen size. Responsive components are parts that interact with the user and, by definition, are simply groups of one or more HTML elements. The most common are buttons, menus, and other building blocks of a web solution's interface. Together, they form a structure.

The result is typically verified against the screen sizes, browsers, and interface states agreed upon at the start of the project – covering not only how components look at different breakpoints, but also how they behave in states such as hover, focus, loading, error, and empty.

To give you a real example: when we worked with Restream, a SaaS multistreaming platform for content creators, one of the key deliverables was a brand-new, mobile-first pricing page. That meant every responsive component, from the plan comparison cards to the toggle switches, was designed for smaller screens first and then scaled up, rather than the other way around.

Reusable code + documentation

Reusable code is a common front-end deliverable in its own right. In practice, it means components, shared utilities, documented patterns, and design-system implementation that a team can apply consistently across multiple screens or flows, instead of rebuilding the same logic each time.

Today, this concept has evolved well beyond isolated snippets. Modern front-end teams quite often deliver component libraries and design systems, which are structured collections of pre-built, tested UI elements (buttons, forms, cards, navigation patterns) that can be reused across an entire product. 

A component library is, in essence, a living toolkit: it speeds up development, keeps the interface visually consistent, and makes future updates considerably easier to manage. Both web.dev and MDN recognize component-based architecture as a core part of how front-end development works today.

The tangible outputs may include source code, setup instructions, component documentation, or a README, depending on the agreed scope. Not every project requires all of these, so it's important to confirm the expected depth of documentation with the team early on.

Our Restream project is a good illustration. The team built reusable components and migrated key marketing pages to Next.js, resulting in new pages, more predictable releases, controlled campaigns during Black Friday/Cyber Monday, and a site that's now easier to evolve and update.

Good product documentation is, on the other hand, one of the most crucial and tangible outputs that provide clarity for the user – and for any developer who picks up the codebase after handover.

Optimization

Optimization (combined with front-end testing) is one of the less tangible deliverables, yet one of the most important for the website's or app's ease of use. The developer's job is to accommodate the solution not only to different sizes (see: responsiveness) but also to various thumb locations, screen orientations, swiping and zooming motions, etc.

Beyond device accommodation, front-end teams increasingly measure performance against Core Web Vitals — a set of three user-experience metrics Google defines and surfaces as quality signals, and a common reference point for web performance work:

• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) measures how quickly the main content of a page becomes visible;
• INP (Interaction to Next Paint) measures how fast a page responds when a user clicks, taps, or types;
• CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) measures visual stability — whether elements jump around unexpectedly while the page loads.

A competent front-end team sets performance budgets around these metrics and optimizes against them throughout the build, instead of later on. 

The specific targets and how strictly they're enforced are agreed within the project scope. No team can guarantee particular scores, since results also depend on hosting, third-party scripts, and content decisions outside the development team's control. 

You can read more about Core Web Vitals and their thresholds on web.dev.

Accessibility

Accessibility is a front-end deliverable that has moved firmly from "nice to have" to a standard part of the development process. It means building your website or application so that people with disabilities (visual, motor, cognitive, or auditory) can use it effectively.

In practice, developers work against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the internationally recognized standard for accessible web content. The target conformance level (A, AA, or AAA) is agreed separately for each project and depends on the product's audience, industry requirements, and budget. The work typically includes proper semantic HTML, keyboard navigation support, sufficient color contrast, screen reader compatibility (using WAI-ARIA attributes where needed), and meaningful alternative text for images and media. 

Both web.dev and MDN treat accessibility as its own distinct category of front-end competency, separate from general optimization or responsiveness.

For your business, an accessible product broadens the audience that can actually use it. But the more fundamental point is straightforward: if part of your audience can't use your product, your product isn't finished.

Backend services integration

The client side also calls for backend integration with the provided third-party APIs. As a deliverable, it's all about ensuring that the browser-facing layer is fully integrated with the server infrastructure that stores all the data and where all the requests go when they leave the browser.

In practice, the backend, APIs, and their documentation are typically provided by the client's team or a separate backend team. The depth of integration work, whether it's connecting to a few REST endpoints or building a complex data layer with caching, error handling, and real-time updates, depends on the agreed project scope.

Automated testing

Automated testing rarely appears on "deliverables" lists, yet it's increasingly common in professional projects.

In short, automated testing means writing code that tests your code. Teams typically deliver a combination of unit tests (checking individual components in isolation), integration tests (verifying that components work together as expected), and end-to-end tests (simulating real user flows such as clicking buttons, filling out forms, and navigating between pages). The specific types of testing and the extent of automation coverage depend on the project's requirements and the agreed scope. MDN's testing documentation covers the main strategies and why they matter.

A solid test suite gives you confidence that new features won't break existing ones and that deployments won't introduce regressions. For a business commissioning this work, that is the difference between a product that launches once and breaks on the first update, and one you can evolve over time with confidence.

Review and handoff

The final stage before a project (or a project phase) goes live is the formal review and handoff. Depending on the agreed scope, this can include:

• Reviewed and approved code, merged into the main branch;
• Updated documentation covering setup, architecture decisions, and component usage;
• Results of QA checks — resolved in-scope bugs and a list of known limitations, if any;
• Preparation for release: build configuration, deployment instructions, or staging environment setup.

The exact composition of a handoff package varies from project to project. It's best to confirm the expected deliverables with the delivery team early, so both sides know what "done" looks like before development begins.

Why front-end deliverables matter to your business

Defined deliverables give both sides a shared, checkable picture of a project — not just a finished product at the end.

You and your provider can see what's been completed and what's still open at any point, rather than relying on a vague sense of progress. Acceptance criteria make review and sign-off a matter of checking against an agreed standard, not a subjective judgment call. Tested components, documentation, and clearly stated limitations reduce the risk of a rough handoff — whether that's to your internal team or another agency down the line.

Because the work is observable, payment and approval can be tied to what's actually been delivered rather than to estimates of effort — which also helps you avoid the hidden costs of web development that come from scope assumptions nobody wrote down. In the Restream project, for example, that clarity extended to details like fixing a subtle SEO issue on the pricing page so it could be indexed properly — the kind of item that only gets caught when deliverables are actually reviewed.

If you're evaluating a front-end partner for your next project, ask what you'll actually receive at each stage, and how you'll be able to verify it.