Website Launch Checklist
Launching a new website or going live with a redesign is an exciting moment, but it is also where things commonly go wrong. Broken links, missing redirects, unfiled sitemaps, and untested forms can quietly undermine your new site's performance from day one. This checklist ensures you do not miss anything critical before, during, and after your launch.
Print this page, share it with your web developer, and work through it systematically. Each item takes only minutes to verify, but missing any one of them can cause problems that take weeks to discover and fix.
Pre-Launch: Content and Design
Proofread all content. Read every page carefully for typos, grammatical errors, and factual inaccuracies. Check that business hours, phone numbers, addresses, and pricing information are correct. Have someone other than the content writer do the final review since fresh eyes catch errors more easily.
Verify all images load correctly. Check every image on every page. Look for broken images, improperly sized images, and missing alt text. Confirm that images are optimized for web and not loading full-resolution originals that slow down the page.
Test all links. Click every link on every page. Check internal links between your own pages, external links to other websites, and any downloadable files. Use a tool like Screaming Frog or a broken link checker to automate this process for larger sites.
Review on multiple devices. View every page on a desktop, tablet, and phone. Test on both iOS and Android if possible. Look for layout issues, overlapping text, unreadable fonts, and elements that do not adapt properly to different screen sizes.
Test in multiple browsers. Check your site in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge at minimum. While modern browsers are increasingly compatible, you may still encounter rendering differences, especially with custom fonts, animations, or complex layouts.
Pre-Launch: Functionality
Test all forms. Submit every form on your site and verify that you receive the notification email, the visitor sees a confirmation message, and the data is captured correctly. Test on both desktop and mobile. Verify spam protection is working without being too aggressive for real users.
Test click-to-call links. On a mobile phone, tap every phone number on your site and verify it initiates a call to the correct number. This is critical for service businesses that depend on phone leads.
Verify email functionality. If your site sends any emails (form notifications, auto-responders, order confirmations), test every email trigger and verify the messages arrive correctly with proper formatting.
Check third-party integrations. If you use Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, live chat, scheduling widgets, or any other third-party tools, verify they are installed correctly and tracking data. Check that API connections are working if applicable.
Pre-Launch: Technical SEO
Verify title tags and meta descriptions. Every page should have a unique title tag under 60 characters and a unique meta description under 160 characters. Check that they include relevant keywords and accurately describe the page content.
Check heading structure. Each page should have exactly one H1 tag. Use H2 and H3 tags to organize content hierarchically. Headings should be descriptive and include relevant keywords where natural.
Verify image alt text. Every image should have descriptive alt text that explains what the image shows. This helps with accessibility and image search visibility.
Set up 301 redirects. If any URLs have changed from the old site, every old URL must have a 301 redirect to its new equivalent. Test each redirect individually to confirm it works correctly. Missing redirects cause 404 errors and lost traffic.
Create and submit an XML sitemap. Generate an XML sitemap that lists all pages on your site. Submit it to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Verify that the sitemap does not include pages you intend to block (like staging URLs or admin pages).
Check robots.txt. Verify your robots.txt file allows search engines to crawl your site. A common mistake is leaving the "noindex" or "disallow all" directives in place from the staging environment, which blocks search engines from indexing your site entirely.
Verify SSL is active. Confirm that your SSL certificate is installed and that all pages load with HTTPS. Check for mixed content warnings where some resources load over HTTP.
Pre-Launch: Performance
Run speed tests. Test your site with Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, or similar tools. Address any critical performance issues before launch. Focus on mobile performance since that is what Google uses for ranking.
Verify caching is configured. Browser caching and server-side caching should be active and properly configured. For WordPress sites, confirm your caching plugin is installed, activated, and configured correctly.
Create a backup. Take a complete backup of the new site before going live. If anything goes catastrophically wrong, you can restore to this known-good state.
Launch Day
Switch DNS or deploy the new site. Whether you are pointing your domain to a new server, deploying files from staging, or removing a maintenance page, execute the actual switch according to your plan.
Verify the live site loads correctly. Check the site from multiple devices and if possible from different networks (home, cellular, VPN) to ensure it is accessible everywhere.
Test all forms and critical functions again. Now that the site is live, run through all your critical user flows one more time to confirm everything works in the production environment.
Submit the sitemap to search engines. Log into Google Search Console and request indexing for your homepage and other key pages. Submit your updated sitemap if you have not already.
Verify analytics tracking. Check that Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and any other tracking tools are recording data correctly on the live site. Look at the real-time report to confirm live visitors are being tracked.
Post-Launch (First Week)
Monitor for 404 errors. Check Google Search Console daily for new crawl errors. Fix any 404 errors with appropriate 301 redirects. Check your server logs for additional errors that may not appear in Search Console immediately.
Monitor traffic patterns. Compare daily traffic to pre-launch levels. Some fluctuation is normal, but a significant drop indicates a problem that needs investigation. Check that organic traffic, direct traffic, and referral traffic are all flowing normally.
Check Google Business Profile. Verify that your Google Business Profile website link points to the correct URL and that any other listings or directory profiles are updated with new URLs if they changed.
Gather feedback. Ask trusted customers, colleagues, and friends to visit the new site and report any issues they find. Real users often catch problems that you and your developer missed during testing.
Document what was launched. Record the launch date, what changed, and any known issues that still need to be addressed. This documentation is valuable for future reference and helps if you need to troubleshoot problems later.