Abstract: The characteristic town is a major strategic innovation of our country in the new era. It plays an important role in promoting reform of the supply side and boosting economic transition. While in the current development process of the characteristic town, most enterprises and governments have not been clear about the operation points in different stages. Neglecting the pre-planning, attaching importance to construction but ignoring the operation has become increasingly prominent, resulting in some characteristic towns falling into the development dilemma and gradually deviating from the correct orientation. This article takes the whole process development of the characteristic town as the breakthrough point, and firstly constructs the whole process development framework. This framework divides the development of the characteristic town into three stages: preparation, medium-term construction and post-operation, and the important links of each stage are elaborated. Then this paper chooses Wuzhen, which has more than ten years of mature development experience, as a typical case to analyse the experience and development keynotes of the characteristic town in three stages of development, in order to provide references for the development of the same genre characteristic towns.