Pre-Launch Website Checklist

Start here: treat launch as a handoff, not a button click

Going live on a new or redesigned site is operational work. DNS propagates, caches clear at different speeds, and someone always discovers a broken form the morning after the announcement email. Use this checklist on staging first, then again on production with fresh eyes from someone who did not build the site.

Block launch if critical paths fail: homepage load, primary service pages, contact or booking flow, and admin access for your team to fix typos. Everything else can follow in a short post-launch window if documented.

Content and QA across templates

Crawl the site with Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or your CMS export and fix 404s, placeholder text, and duplicate titles before DNS cutover. Click every nav item, footer link, and CTA on desktop and mobile. Pay special attention to blog pagination, team bios, and legal pages copied from the old site with outdated company names or addresses.

Spell-check is not enough. Read hero headlines aloud. Confirm phone numbers use consistent formatting and tel: links. Verify email addresses on contact pages match the inboxes your staff monitors. A typo in info@ costs leads silently.

Content checklist

• Unique title and meta description on all indexable pages.
• Open Graph and Twitter card images for homepage and key landing pages (social shares look professional).
• Favicon and apple-touch-icon present.
• Copyright year and business name correct in footer.
• Images have alt text where they convey meaning.
• No staging URLs hard-coded in content, schema, or canonical tags.

Forms, notifications, and integrations

Submit every form with test data: contact, quote, newsletter, job application, portal login if applicable. Confirm emails arrive at the right inbox, CRM records create, autoresponders send, and spam filters are not swallowing messages. Test from an external email address, not only the agency domain.

If you use Zapier, Make, HubSpot, Salesforce, or a booking tool, trace one submission end to end. Wrong field mapping is common when forms are rebuilt. File upload limits and required fields should match what sales expects.

Form verification steps

1. Submit each form type once from desktop and once from mobile.
2. Confirm notification email subject lines identify the source page.
3. Check CRM or spreadsheet for complete field data.
4. Verify thank-you page or inline success message (and that thank-you is noindex if it is thin duplicate content).
5. Confirm GDPR or marketing consent checkboxes record correctly if used.

Analytics, ads, and conversion tracking

Install analytics (GA4 or alternative) and tag manager containers on production only after you remove duplicate legacy tags. Configure key events: form submit, click to call, calendar booking complete, ecommerce purchase if relevant. Link Search Console to the production property and verify domain ownership.

Update Google Ads and Meta pixel landing URLs and conversion actions if URLs changed. Broken post-click tracking wastes budget the day campaigns restart. Document which events map to which KPIs so future hires do not duplicate tags.

Cookie consent banners should load required tags in the right order for your legal approach. Test accept and reject paths if you serve EU or California visitors.

SEO and redirects for redesigns

If URLs changed, implement 301 redirects from every old URL with traffic or backlinks to the closest relevant new page. Export analytics landing pages and Search Console top pages from the last twelve months as your redirect list. Missing redirects cause ranking drops and angry bookmarked users.

Submit XML sitemap in Search Console after launch. Review robots.txt on production (staging disallow rules must not copy over). Set canonical tags on pages with parameters or syndicated content. Remove noindex from pages that should rank once you are confident in content.

Performance, security, and hosting

Run PageSpeed Insights on homepage and top three landing pages on production URL. Fix obvious image and script issues before sending launch traffic. Enable HTTPS with valid certificate; force HTTP to HTTPS. Confirm HSTS only when you are sure all subdomains support SSL.

Set up backups and document how to restore. Know where DNS is managed and who can rollback. If using WordPress, update core, themes, and plugins; remove default admin users and unused plugins. Enable firewall or rate limiting if you expect publicity or have had bot form spam before.

Legal, accessibility, and operational readiness

• Privacy policy, terms, and cookie notice linked in footer.
• Accessibility spot check: keyboard navigation, form labels, heading order on key templates.
• 404 page helpful with links to services and contact.
• Status page or comms plan if launch coincides with email blast or PR.
• Internal doc: who to call for DNS, hosting, CMS, and forms after hours.

Train client-facing staff on new navigation so phone calls do not stall ("I can't find pricing on your new site"). A five-minute internal walkthrough prevents public confusion.

Launch day sequence

1. Lower DNS TTL twenty-four hours ahead if you control it.
2. Take a full backup of old site and database.
3. Point DNS or flip hosting; verify SSL on www and apex.
4. Purge CDN and host cache; test in incognito from mobile network.
5. Run smoke tests on forms and analytics real-time view.
6. Send announcement only after smoke tests pass.

First two weeks after launch

Monitor Search Console for coverage errors and crawl spikes. Watch Core Web Vitals in CrUX or PageSpeed for regressions. Compare conversion rate to pre-launch baseline once sample size allows. Collect feedback from sales on repeated visitor questions. Patch small copy issues quickly; queue larger enhancements instead of hot-fixing redesigns daily without priority.

When to get help

Internal teams can run this checklist with a project manager and one technical owner. Bring in your developer or agency for DNS cutover, redirect maps over five hundred URLs, ecommerce or membership migrations, and complex tracking stacks. Do not launch alone if you have never managed a domain move; a one-hour supervised cutover beats days of downtime.

If smoke tests fail hours before a announced launch, delay the announcement. Reputation recovers faster from a postponed email than from a site where forms, checkout, or booking is broken under a flood of new visitors.