After weeks or months of work, the temptation on launch day is simply to press the button and celebrate. Resist it for an afternoon. Most launch problems are small, predictable and easy to catch beforehand, and much more embarrassing to catch afterwards when a customer points them out. A website launch checklist catches them first.
Your web designer should have their own technical checklist. This website launch checklist is for you, the business owner, to work through alongside them. You know your business better than anyone, so you’re best placed to spot the details that are wrong.
With autumn often a busy period for many businesses, early September is a sensible time to get a new site live and settled before the run-up to the end of the year.
Content
- Every page has been read by someone other than the person who wrote it.
- No dummy text or sample images remain anywhere.
- Phone numbers, email addresses and physical addresses are correct everywhere they appear.
- Opening hours, prices and service areas are up to date.
- Team names, photos and job titles are current.
- Every image has permission to be used, whether you own it or have a licence.
- Legal pages are in place: privacy notice, cookie information and terms where relevant.
- If you’re a limited company, your registered company details are shown.
Forms and functionality
- Every form has been submitted as a test, and the emails arrive with the right person.
- Automatic confirmation emails work and read well.
- Booking systems, payments or checkouts have been tested with a real transaction where possible.
- Phone numbers can be tapped to call on mobile.
- Social media links point to your accounts, not the platform’s homepage.
- Any maps show the correct location.
- Site search, if you have it, returns sensible results.
Mobile, speed and accessibility
- Key pages have been checked on a real iPhone and a real Android phone.
- The menu opens, closes and works properly on mobile.
- Pages load reasonably quickly on mobile data.
- Images are compressed and sized sensibly.
- Text is readable and has good contrast.
- The site can be used with a keyboard alone, and images have alt text.
Search, tracking and technical
- Every page has a unique, sensible title and description.
- The site isn’t blocking search engines. Development sites often are, and the setting sometimes gets left on at launch.
- If this replaces an old site, redirects are in place from old page addresses to new ones.
- Analytics is installed and recording visits, and form submissions are tracked as conversions.
- Your cookie banner works, and non-essential tracking waits for consent where required.
- The site loads securely, with the padlock showing on every page.
- A custom 404 page helps lost visitors find their way back.
The best launches are boring. Everything that could go wrong has already been checked, so launch day is just a quiet switch-over.
Ownership and aftercare
- You have admin access to the website, the domain, the hosting account and your analytics.
- Backups are running, and you know who is responsible for updates, security and support from now on.
After launch, keep an eye on things for a few weeks. Check your enquiry inbox, test the forms again after a few days, and look at your analytics and Google Search Console for anything unusual. Ask a few regular customers to look around and tell you if anything seems off.
Keep a simple log of anything reported in those first weeks, with the date and who fixed it. Small issues often come in clusters, and a log makes it easier to spot a pattern, such as one form or one browser causing repeated problems. It also gives you a useful record if the same thing crops up again after a future update.
It’s also worth choosing your launch day carefully. Avoid Friday afternoons and the day before a big campaign, so there’s time to fix anything that crops up while people are around to fix it.
Next steps with your website launch checklist
Copy this website launch checklist into a shared document and tick items off with your designer, noting who checked what. Anything you can’t tick should have a named person and a date next to it.
A pre-launch process like this is part of our website design and development service. If you’re launching a site someone else built and want a second pair of eyes, our maintenance and support team can run the checks for you.
