How to record a website handoff video a client can still follow a year later.

The recording workflow

1. List the client’s jobs, not the site’s features

   Write down the five to eight things this client will do without you: change opening hours, add a team member, publish a post, swap a photo. Ask them if you are not sure. Anything they will never touch stays out of the video.

2. Log in the way the client will

   Use the client’s own account or an account with the same role, not your designer or administrator login. The menus on screen then match what they see, and you find out now if their access is missing something.

3. Clean the screen

   Turn on Do Not Disturb, close other clients’ tabs, hide the bookmarks bar, and lock your password manager so it does not pop up over the login form. Set the browser window to a fixed size, 1920×1080 for example, and write it down.

4. Record the overview, then each task

   Press Shift-Command-5, choose your microphone under Options, and record. Say the task name aloud before each task and pause two seconds after each published result. Those pauses are where you cut or re-record later.

5. Fix slips without restarting

   Trim the start and end. Cut a detour out. If you named the wrong button at minute six, re-record that section only; a ten-minute take is not worth redoing for one sentence.

6. Export an MP4 and write the summary

   Watch the export once and note the time each task starts. That list of timestamps, plus one line per task, is the written summary that goes out with the file.

7. Deliver the file and keep the source

   Put the MP4 in a folder the client owns, send logins through a password manager or a separate channel, and keep your recording project. You will need it the first time the site changes.

What a website handoff video should cover, in order

Six parts, in this order. The lengths are our editorial guidance for a brochure or small business site; the order matters more than the seconds. Login comes before the tour because a client who cannot get in will not watch the rest, and the boundaries come last because that is what they will look for when something breaks.

If the list of tasks runs past eight, or the total passes 12 minutes, keep this video as the overview and record the extra tasks as separate short clips. A client looking for “how do I add a price” should not have to scrub through a 25-minute file.

A website handoff video script you can copy

Replace the brackets and keep the list next to the screen while you record. You do not need to read it word for word. You do need the order fixed and every menu name said exactly as the client sees it.

Say the date in the opening on purpose. A client who opens the file in two years should know how old it is, and it is a one-sentence fix when you update the video.

• Opening: “This is the handoff video for [site address], recorded on [date]. It shows how to log in and how to do the [number] things you will most often change yourself.”
• Logging in: “Go to [login address]. Sign in with your own account, the one I invited at [email]. If you forget the password, use [reset link name] on this screen.”
• Map: “You will use three areas: [area 1] for [purpose], [area 2] for [purpose], [area 3] for [purpose]. Everything else you can leave alone.”
• Each task: “Task [number]: [task name]. Open [area]. Click [exact control name]. Change [field]. Click [save or publish control]. Now open the live page and check that [result].”
• Where things live: “The domain is registered at [registrar] under [whose account]. The site runs on [platform and plan], billed to [whose card]. Messages from the contact form arrive at [inbox].”
• Boundaries: “Please do not change [area or setting]; it controls the layout of every page. If something looks broken, do not try to repair it. Write to [contact] with a screenshot.”

Worked example: a 6-page Webflow site handed to a dental clinic

The site has six pages: Home, Treatments, Team, Fees, Blog and Contact. Team members and blog posts are CMS items. The person who will edit it is the office manager, who has content editing access and no interest in how the layout was built.

You asked what changes during a normal year and got five answers: holiday opening hours, a new hygienist, a monthly blog post, fees every January, and new photos after a refit. Those five are the tasks. The video runs 10:30.

Two details make this version useful. Task 1 shows both places the opening hours appear, the Contact page and the footer, because the client would otherwise update one and miss the other. And every task ends on the live page, not on the editing screen, so the office manager learns to check the result the way a patient would see it.

What to deliver with the handoff video

The video is one of four things the client needs, and the other three take ten minutes to prepare. Send them together in one email so the client can find all of it by searching for a single message.

The timestamp list does the job of chapters in any player: the client reads “5:10 Publish a blog post” and drags to 5:10. Ask the client to reply once they have watched it. A file in a folder gives you no view count, so a reply is the only confirmation you will get.

Version example: clinic-handoff-v2. The brief records the site or CMS version, client role, recording date, delivery filenames, owner, and next review date. Ask the client to complete one task with their own role: change the test opening hours, publish, and confirm the new hours on the live page and in the footer. A view count or an acknowledgement is not proof they can do it.

Before an update, make a separate backup of the editable project and its media. Export the new revision with a new version name, keep the prior MP4 until the client checks the result, and update the timestamp list after any cut. Editing the local project does not replace an already delivered file or a video embedded in Notion.

Record a handoff video for free with Shift-Command-5, and where that runs out

The recorder built into macOS is enough for a first handoff video. It captures the screen and your microphone and saves a .mov file to the desktop. QuickTime Player opens the same toolbar from File > New Screen Recording.

It runs out in three places. QuickTime Player’s editing features are trim, split into clips, rearrange, add a clip, and remove audio or video: there is no zoom for a small Publish button, no captions, and no way to re-record a section in place. On macOS 14, 15 and 26 the built-in recorder captures the microphone only, so a site with a video or sound on the page is recorded silent. And the result is a flat file: when the client renames a menu item in three months, your options are a new clip spliced in by hand at exactly the same window size, or a new ten-minute take.

1. Press Shift-Command-5 and choose Record Selected Portion; drag the frame over the browser window. On macOS 26 Tahoe and later you can use Record Selected Window.
2. Open Options, choose your microphone, and turn on Show Mouse Clicks so the client sees where you click.
3. Click Record and work through the outline. Stop with the Stop button in the menu bar or Command-Control-Esc.
4. Open the .mov in QuickTime Player and use Edit > Trim to remove the dead time at both ends.
5. For a mistake in the middle, split the movie into clips around it and remove that clip.

Keep the handoff video current with Qreata

A handoff video is the kind of recording that has to stay true for years, and that is the job Qreata is built for. The project stays editable after you export, so the video you sent in October can be opened again in January.

Take the clinic. Three months after launch they rename Treatments to Services. In the video that label is on screen, and in your narration, from 2:10 to 2:30, at the end of the admin map. Open the project, pick Replace Take (the Rerecord tool in the editor), and Shift-drag across 2:10–2:30 on the timeline. Open the page list at the same window size, say the sentence with the new name, and stop. Screen, camera, microphone and system audio are replaced together for those 20 seconds; the other 10:10 is untouched. Export again and replace the file in the client’s folder. The range has to sit inside one segment and can’t cross a cut, a retake shorter than the range is rejected, and a longer one is trimmed to fit.

Three other parts of Qreata matter for client work. Microphone and system audio are separate tracks, each with its own Mute and a Volume from 0 to 200%, so a video that autoplays on the client’s home page can be turned down or muted after the take without touching your voice. Captions in video burns word-highlighted captions into the MP4, which helps a client who watches at the front desk with the sound off. And recording, editing and transcription all run on your Mac with no account: nothing is uploaded unless you press an upload button, and Blur · select elements keeps a list of form submissions blurred while you scroll past it, which is what you want when a client’s admin area is on screen.

The client gets a plain MP4 (H.264). They keep it without a subscription on your side or theirs, and there is no hosted link that stops working when a plan lapses. Qreata can also upload to Google Drive when you press the button and give you a link that anyone with the link can open. Qreata Cloud, a separate paid subscription, adds a hosted link if you want one; the handoff does not depend on it.

Qreata does not automatically find sensitive data: choose the elements or timed regions to cover and review the exported file. The public beta has no chapter authoring or SRT export. A local MP4 provides no viewer report, so use the task check above to confirm the client can follow it. Qreata runs on Apple Silicon with macOS 14 or later, has English and Russian UI, and edits its own recordings.

The price suits work billed by the project: $49 once for three Macs, with all future updates and no per-seat subscription to carry through months with no launches. Team is $149 once for up to 50 Macs. To test it in the 7-day trial, record a two-minute tour of a site you built, export it, then reopen the project and replace ten seconds with a renamed menu item.

Common mistakes in website handoff videos

Each of these produces a support email within the first month.

• Recording from your own administrator account. The client logs in, sees half the menu items, and assumes something is broken.
• Touring every menu. The client needs five tasks, not a description of the platform.
• Stopping on the editing screen. Show the live page after every change, so the client learns that Save and Publish are different moments.
• Typing or reading out a password. Send invitations to the client’s own accounts and keep credentials out of the video and the email.
• Showing real form submissions or customer details. Record with a test entry. QuickTime cannot blur a finished recording, and in Qreata a blur region is a fixed rectangle you place yourself, so one missed frame still shows the name.
• Sending only a link from your own account. If the video lives where you pay, it disappears when you stop paying. Give the client the file.
• Deleting the source. Without the project or the original recording, the first site change means a full retake.

Questions about this workflow