The calendar below assumes a decision-ready client, one primary launch market, a defined product story, and feedback from a small group of named approvers. Several workstreams overlap. The weeks are calendar weeks, not a promise that every task receives a full week of effort.
Weeks 1 to 2: Discovery and launch definition
The first milestone is a signed scope, not a moodboard. The team confirms the audience, launch date, conversion action, product facts, content owners, analytics needs, technical constraints, and the devices that matter.
Deliverables should include a brief, a risk register, a content inventory, a decision log, and a definition of launch success. If the team cannot explain what the visitor should do after the hero interaction, the project is not ready for expensive 3D work.
Weeks 2 to 4: Experience concept and technical spike
The agency turns the story into a small number of interaction concepts and builds a technical spike for the riskiest one. This is where you test shader behavior, asset weight, touch input, loading, and fallback behavior before the visual direction becomes expensive to change.
The spike should run on at least one current desktop, one mid-range mobile device, and one lower-power device. It is not a finished page. It is evidence that the chosen interaction can survive outside the design team's machine.
Weeks 3 to 6: Art direction, UX, and asset planning
The approved concept becomes a page structure, motion system, component plan, and asset list. The team decides what is live 3D, what is video, what is a static image, and what is plain HTML. That decision matters. Not every moment needs a canvas.
For an enterprise launch, include content approvals in this phase. Product claims, legal copy, translations, accessibility text, and campaign tracking should not arrive after the interface is built.
Weeks 5 to 9: Shader and 3D asset production
Artists and developers produce the models, textures, materials, transitions, and interaction states. The team should keep a low-cost fallback in parallel rather than waiting until the end to discover that a phone cannot render the hero comfortably.
Ask for a reviewable asset at each milestone. A single final review creates avoidable risk because a change to geometry or lighting can affect file size, frame rate, layout, and loading behavior at once.
Weeks 6 to 11: Front-end and CMS build
Development turns approved screens and assets into a working site. The team wires the CMS, forms, product data, analytics, consent behavior, and any CRM or commerce connection. The staging environment should be close enough to production that performance findings are meaningful.
Keep content entry ahead of the final QA pass. Placeholder copy changes line wrapping, page height, focus order, and sometimes the timing of an animation. A page cannot be performance-tested properly while its real assets are still missing.
Weeks 9 to 13: Performance and accessibility pass
Performance is a design constraint, not a cleanup task. Google's Core Web Vitals guidance sets good targets at the 75th percentile of page loads: Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint at 200 milliseconds or less, and Cumulative Layout Shift at 0.1 or less.
Those targets do not mean every WebGL scene must load in 2.5 seconds. They do mean the first useful content should arrive quickly, the page should respond to input, and the layout should remain stable while the scene loads. Test the HTML and the canvas separately so a visually impressive hero does not hide a slow or unusable page.
Accessibility needs its own review. Provide a meaningful non-WebGL path, keyboard access, readable text, visible focus, reduced-motion behavior, useful alternative text, and a way to complete the launch action without relying on a pointer or graphics acceleration.
Weeks 12 to 16: Staging, content lock, and stakeholder review
Staging is where you test the complete experience with final content, integrations, tracking, and representative traffic assumptions. Set one owner for consolidated feedback. A long chain of separate comments is a schedule risk because the team cannot tell which decision is final.
Use a short acceptance list:
- The launch action works on supported browsers and devices.
- The fallback experience explains the product without the 3D scene.
- The page remains usable with reduced motion enabled.
- Analytics records the important steps, not just page views.
- Forms, CRM routing, consent, and confirmation messages work.
- Content, legal review, localization, and redirects are complete.
- The release can be rolled back.
Weeks 16 to 20: Release and stabilization
Reserve the final weeks for a controlled release, not new creative direction. Publish to a small audience or behind a release switch when the campaign allows it. Monitor errors, loading behavior, conversion events, and support questions. Fix issues before the public push.
Locomotive's Lightship case study is a useful example of launch complexity. The site supported the official launch of an electric RV prototype at SXSW, combined an immersive experience with an accessible one, and included a pre-order flow using Stripe.
Its Webisoft case study shows another relevant pattern, combining fluid animation, 3D assets, optimized navigation, and a scalable platform. Neither page publishes a project price or delivery duration. That is why the proposal, rather than a case study headline, must define your budget.
