Website launch checklist: 14 checks

A practical pre-launch checklist for a business website: legal pages, HTTPS, meta tags, sitemap, forms, speed and analytics, plus what to do in week one.

Most launch-day problems are small and avoidable: a contact form that sends nowhere, a missing page, a link preview with no image. Go through this list on your live address, not only on a test copy. Each item says why it matters and how to check it.

Trust and legal

1. Privacy policy and terms pages. Why: if you collect enquiries, emails or payments, visitors and payment providers expect to see how you handle their data. Verify: both pages exist, are linked from the footer, and name your business and contact details.
2. Force HTTPS. Why: browsers warn visitors about sites without it, and it protects form data. Verify: open the http:// version of your address and confirm it redirects to https:// with a padlock and no mixed-content warnings.

Search and sharing

1. Unique meta titles and descriptions. Why: they are what people read in Google results, and duplicates look careless. Verify: each page has its own title and description; view source or use a browser extension to check.
2. Social preview (Open Graph) image. Why: links shared on WhatsApp, LinkedIn or Facebook otherwise look bare. Verify: paste your address into a sharing debugger or simply send it to yourself on WhatsApp.
3. Favicon. Why: it is the small icon in the browser tab and bookmarks, and its absence looks unfinished. Verify: check the tab in Chrome and on your phone.
4. sitemap.xml and robots.txt. Why: the sitemap lists your pages for search engines, and robots.txt tells crawlers what they may visit. Verify: open yoursite.com/sitemap.xml and yoursite.com/robots.txt, and confirm robots.txt is not blocking the whole site, a leftover from development.

Quality and speed

1. Compress images. Why: oversized images are the most common cause of slow pages. Verify: no image is far larger than the space it fills, and the page loads quickly on mobile data.
2. Mobile friendliness. Why: most visitors will arrive on a phone. Verify: open every page on a real phone, check text size, tap targets and that nothing scrolls sideways.
3. Custom 404 page. Why: a visitor who mistypes an address should be guided back, not left at a dead end. Verify: visit a made-up address and check that you get your branded page with a link home.
4. Fix broken links. Why: dead links frustrate visitors and look neglected. Verify: click through all menus, footer links and buttons, or run a link-checker tool.

Forms and function

1. Form validation and an end-to-end test. Why: a form that looks fine but never reaches you silently loses customers. Verify: fill it in with real details, submit it, confirm the success message appears, and confirm the enquiry actually arrives in your inbox or dashboard. Also try empty and invalid entries to check the error messages.
2. Test every button and link. Why: call buttons, WhatsApp links, maps and social icons are easy to leave pointing to placeholders. Verify: tap each one on a phone and confirm it goes to the right place.
3. Lighthouse check. Why: it flags speed, accessibility and basic SEO issues quickly. Verify: run it in Chrome DevTools in mobile mode on your key pages and read what it highlights.
4. Analytics. Why: without it you cannot tell what is working. Verify: open the live site, then check your analytics report to see your own visit appear.
5. Final audit. Why: small typos and placeholder text survive longer than anyone expects. Verify: read every page aloud, check phone numbers, addresses and prices, and ask someone who has not seen the site to try to find your contact details.

The first week after launch

• Submit your sitemap in Google Search Console so Google finds your pages sooner. You will need to verify ownership of your domain first.
• Monitor your forms daily. Send yourself a test enquiry on day one and again at the end of the week.
• Check your backups. Confirm that your host or platform takes regular backups and know how to restore one.
• Watch analytics and Search Console for errors, such as pages that could not be indexed or links that return a 404.
• Share the site: add it to your Google Business Profile, social bios, email signature and printed material.
• Note every request from real visitors and customers. Those notes become your first round of improvements.

Do not expect Google to rank a new site in days. Indexing can take from days to weeks, so use the early period to fix issues and build your listings and links.