The website launch checklist: 42 things to check before you go live

Most website problems are not discovered by the person who built the site. They are discovered by a customer, three weeks after launch, when the contact form has been quietly failing the whole time. A launch checklist is not bureaucracy — it is the difference between finding the broken thing yourself and having a customer find it for you.

This is the list we work through on every launch. Copy it, delete what does not apply, and tick things off in order.

1. Content and copy

• Every page has a single, unique H1 that says what the page is.
• No placeholder text anywhere — search the whole site for 'lorem', 'TODO', 'coming soon' and 'Company Name'.
• Business name, address (if published) and phone number are identical everywhere, character for character.
• Prices on the site match the prices you actually charge today.
• Spelling and grammar checked by someone who did not write the copy.
• Every image has been looked at on a phone — text on images is unreadable at small sizes surprisingly often.
• Team photos, licence numbers and certifications are current.
• Hours are correct, including holiday exceptions if you show them.

2. Links and navigation

• Every navigation link goes to a page that exists — click all of them, do not assume.
• Every button on every page has been clicked once.
• Footer links work, including social icons pointing at the correct profiles.
• No links to staging or preview URLs.
• External links open sensibly and are not broken.
• A real 404 page exists, is branded, and offers a route back into the site.
• The logo links to the home page.

3. Forms and conversion paths

This section is where launches actually fail. Test the form as a stranger would, not as the person who built it.

• Submit every form with real data and confirm the message arrives in the inbox that is monitored.
• Submit from a phone, on cellular data, not just from the office wifi.
• Check the spam folder — a new sending domain often lands there for the first few days.
• The success message is obvious and tells the visitor what happens next and when.
• Required-field errors appear next to the field, in words, not just a red outline.
• The submission is stored somewhere, not only emailed. Email is not a database.
• Spam protection is on: honeypot field, a timing check, or a rate limit.
• Phone numbers are click-to-call links on mobile.
• Any booking or payment link goes to a live, correctly configured account.

4. Technical

• HTTPS works and the certificate is valid, with no mixed-content warnings.
• http:// redirects to https:// and the www/non-www choice redirects one way only.
• The site loads at the bare domain and at www.
• Pages render correctly in Chrome, Safari and Firefox, and on a real iPhone and a real Android phone.
• Largest Contentful Paint is under 2.5 seconds on a mid-range phone on 4G.
• Images are compressed, sized correctly and served in a modern format.
• Favicon and touch icon are set, and are not the framework default.
• Site loads acceptably on a slow connection — throttle to 'Fast 3G' in devtools and watch.

5. SEO fundamentals

• Every page has a unique title tag under about 60 characters.
• Every page has a unique meta description of 140–160 characters.
• One canonical URL per page, pointing at itself.
• robots.txt exists and does NOT block the site — check for a leftover 'Disallow: /' from staging.
• No stray noindex tag left over from the staging site. This is the single most common launch disaster.
• XML sitemap exists, contains only live indexable URLs, and is referenced in robots.txt.
• Structured data validates: Organization or LocalBusiness at minimum.
• Open Graph title, description and image are set, and the preview looks right when pasted into Facebook or a text message.
• Image alt text is meaningful where the image carries information.

6. Redirects, if you are replacing an old site

If the old site had any search presence at all, this is the highest-stakes part of launch day. Every URL that had traffic or a link pointing at it needs a 301 redirect to its closest equivalent on the new site.

1. 01Export the old URL listPull every URL from the old site's sitemap, from Google Search Console's Pages report, and from analytics for the last twelve months. Combine and de-duplicate.
2. 02Map old to newIn a spreadsheet, put the old URL in one column and the new URL in the next. Map to the closest matching page. Only map to the home page as a last resort — a mass redirect to the home page is treated as a soft 404.
3. 03Implement as 301sPermanent redirects, not 302s. A 302 tells search engines the move is temporary and holds the ranking signals in limbo.
4. 04Test every oneAfter launch, request each old URL and confirm it lands on the intended new page with a single hop. Redirect chains lose signal and slow the page.

7. Analytics and measurement

• Analytics is installed and firing on every page — check the realtime report from your phone.
• Google Search Console property is verified for the exact protocol and hostname you launched on.
• The sitemap has been submitted in Search Console.
• Conversion events are configured for form submissions and click-to-call.
• Internal traffic is filtered out, or at least tagged, so your own visits do not pollute the data.
• A consent banner is in place if you use any non-essential tracking.

8. Legal and administrative

• Privacy policy exists and accurately describes what you actually collect.
• Terms of service published if you sell anything online.
• Cookie/consent handling matches what your scripts really do.
• CASL compliance if you collect email addresses for marketing in Canada: express consent, sender identification and a working unsubscribe.
• Accessibility basics: keyboard navigation works, contrast is sufficient, and images have alt text. In Ontario, AODA applies to many organisations.
• Domain registration and hosting are in your own name, with credentials you personally hold.
• Domain auto-renew is switched on.

9. Launch day, in order

1. 01Take a backup of the old siteA full file and database copy, downloaded and stored somewhere you control. You will almost certainly never need it. The one time you do, nothing else will substitute.
2. 02Lower the DNS TTL a day aheadDrop the record's TTL to 300 seconds the day before. That way, if something is wrong, a correction propagates in five minutes instead of a day.
3. 03Point DNS at the new hostChange the record and wait. Do not change five things at once — if the site breaks you want to know which change did it.
4. 04Confirm the certificateLoad the site over https from a device that has never visited it and check the padlock, on both the bare domain and www.
5. 05Run the redirect testsWalk the old-to-new mapping and confirm each one resolves in a single hop.
6. 06Submit the sitemap and request indexingIn Search Console, submit the sitemap and use URL Inspection to request indexing for the home page and your top three money pages.
7. 07Submit one real enquiryFill in the live form as a customer, from your phone, and confirm the notification arrives. Do this after DNS has moved, not before.
8. 08Update everywhere else you existGoogle Business Profile, Facebook, Instagram, directory listings, email signatures, invoices and vehicle signage all point at the site. Make sure they point at the right URL with the right protocol.

10. The first week

• Day 1: check analytics is recording real sessions.
• Day 2: check Search Console coverage for crawl errors.
• Day 3: read the first form submissions and confirm the notification path is reliable.
• Day 7: compare traffic to the same week before launch. A small dip is normal; a cliff means a redirect or an indexing problem.
• Day 7: run a page-speed test on the live site — production is not staging.
• Day 14: review search queries in Search Console. The first real keyword data arrives here, not in a keyword tool.