The short answer

Before launch, test the site the way customers will use it and the way search engines will read it: real content, working forms, tracking that fires, redirects from every old URL, fast pages on a phone and nothing blocking crawlers. On launch day, follow a fixed sequence. In the month after, watch Search Console and your enquiries closely.

A launch is the moment small oversights become public. A contact form that emails a departed colleague, a staging password left on, a tracking script missing from the new templates: none of these are hard problems, and all of them cost real enquiries while nobody notices. A checklist exists because launches happen under time pressure, when people skip what they would never skip on a calm day.

The list below is grouped by area, in roughly the order to work through it. If this launch is part of a redesign, the earlier steps, from baseline to redirect map, are in our website redesign checklist.

Content and design checks

Read every page on the staging site as a customer would, on a phone first. Look for leftover placeholder text, outdated prices, wrong phone numbers, broken images, spelling mistakes in headlines and pages that exist in the menu but were never finished. Content errors are the most common launch problem and the cheapest to fix beforehand.

  • No lorem ipsum, test products, dummy reviews or "coming soon" sections left on public pages
  • Contact details, addresses, opening hours and prices correct and consistent on every page
  • Every image has the right crop on phones, and nothing important is cut off
  • Headings, buttons and navigation labels say the same thing for the same action
  • A useful 404 page that helps people find their way, rather than a dead end
  • Favicon and social sharing images set, so links look right when pasted into messages
  • Copyright year, team photos and client logos current, with permission to use them

Forms, emails and tracking

Submit every form on the live site and confirm each submission arrives where it should, is readable and does not land in spam. Then check that analytics records the visit and that each form, call button and purchase registers as a conversion. A beautiful site with broken forms is the most expensive launch failure there is.

  • Each form sends to a monitored inbox or CRM, with a sensible subject line
  • The person who submits gets a confirmation, and the thank-you page or message works
  • Your domain's email authentication records, SPF, DKIM and DMARC, are set so notifications are not treated as spam
  • Analytics is installed on every template, and internal traffic is filtered out
  • Key events are configured: form submissions, calls, bookings, purchases
  • Ad platform tags and conversion imports still work if you run Google or Meta campaigns
  • Booking, payment and chat tools tested end to end with a real transaction where possible

If you are unsure which events matter, what to measure instead of traffic sets out the short list worth tracking from day one.

Search engines and redirects

Make sure search engines can crawl the new site and find their way from every old address to the right new page. Remove any noindex tags and staging blocks, check that each page has a unique title and description, put the redirect map live, and submit the new XML sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

  • No noindex tag on public pages, and robots.txt does not disallow the whole site
  • Every old URL redirects with a permanent 301 to its closest new equivalent, without chains
  • Unique, descriptive title tags and meta descriptions on every important page
  • One H1 per page that describes the page, with headings in a logical order
  • Canonical tags point to the live domain, not to staging or to the wrong page
  • XML sitemap generated, lists only live pages, and is submitted
  • Structured data for your organisation, services, products or articles validates without errors
  • If the domain itself changes, the Change of Address tool in Search Console has been used

Redirects are where relaunches lose rankings, which is why we gave them their own guide: redesigning without losing Google rankings. For structured data that AI assistants and search engines can use, see schema markup for AI search.

Speed and mobile

Test your main templates in PageSpeed Insights and on a mid-range phone over mobile data, not on the office laptop. Aim for Google's good thresholds: the largest element visible within 2.5 seconds, responses to taps within 200 milliseconds, and layouts that do not jump as they load. Heavy hero videos and unoptimised images are the usual culprits.

  • Images compressed and served in modern formats at sensible sizes
  • Video and large animations loaded only when needed, with a light poster image first
  • Fonts limited to the weights you actually use
  • Third-party scripts, from chat widgets to trackers, reviewed and trimmed
  • Tap targets large enough, and no text that needs zooming to read

When a page is slow and the cause is not obvious, why your website is slow walks through the diagnosis.

Accessibility

Check that the site can be used with a keyboard alone, that text has enough contrast against its background, that images carry meaningful alternative text, that forms have proper labels and that videos have captions. Accessibility is now a legal requirement in many markets, and the same fixes make the site easier for everyone to use.

  • Every link, button and form field reachable and visible with the Tab key
  • Contrast passes WCAG 2.2 AA, including text over images and on buttons
  • Alternative text on informative images, and empty alt text on purely decorative ones
  • Form fields with visible labels and error messages that explain the problem
  • No content that only works on hover, and motion that respects reduced-motion settings

Automated checkers such as WAVE or axe catch part of the problem; a short manual keyboard test catches more. The legal picture across the US, UK and EU is in website accessibility compliance.

Security, legal and ownership

Before launch, confirm the site runs on HTTPS everywhere, admin accounts use strong passwords and two-factor authentication, backups run automatically and have been restored at least once, and the privacy policy and cookie consent reflect the tools the new site actually uses. Check, too, that your business owns the domain, hosting and accounts.

  • HTTPS on every page, with HTTP and non-www versions redirecting to one canonical address
  • Old admin users removed, and every remaining account using two-factor authentication
  • CMS, theme and plugins updated, with anything unused deleted rather than deactivated
  • Automatic off-site backups running, and one test restore completed
  • Uptime monitoring set up to alert someone who will act on it
  • Privacy policy, cookie consent and terms updated for the new forms, analytics and embeds
  • Domain, hosting, CMS and analytics accounts registered to the business, not to a person or supplier

Cookie consent rules differ by market; cookie consent and privacy compliance covers GDPR and India's DPDP rules. The ownership questions are covered in the web design contract checklist.

Launch day, step by step

Launch early in the week, early in the day, with the people who built the site available for the following two days. Then work through a fixed order: back up the old site, deploy, point the domain, switch on redirects, remove staging blocks, test forms and tracking on the live domain, submit the sitemap, and request indexing for key pages.

  1. A day or two before: lower the DNS time-to-live if the domain is moving to new hosting, and freeze content changes on the old site.
  2. Take a full backup of the old site and database, and keep a private copy available for reference.
  3. Deploy the new site and point the domain to it.
  4. Put the redirect map live and spot-check twenty old URLs, including your most-visited pages.
  5. Remove noindex tags, staging passwords and any robots.txt block.
  6. Submit one test through every form and one test purchase or booking, on the live domain.
  7. Confirm analytics is recording live visits and conversions.
  8. Submit the XML sitemap and request indexing for the homepage and main service pages.
  9. Check the site on two phones and two browsers before telling anyone it is live.

The first 30 days after launch

Treat the month after launch as part of the project. Check Search Console weekly for crawl errors, pages dropping out of the index and spikes in not-found errors. Watch which redirects are being used, compare enquiries and conversion rates with your pre-launch baseline, and fix the small problems that only real visitors find.

  • Week one: daily look at forms, error logs, the 404 report and analytics
  • Weeks one to four: weekly Search Console review of indexing, Core Web Vitals and queries
  • Any old URL showing up as not found gets a redirect the same day
  • Rankings watched for the pages that mattered most before launch
  • Backups and uptime alerts confirmed to be working, not just configured
  • A short list of fixes and improvements agreed with whoever maintains the site

Some movement in rankings during the first weeks is normal while search engines re-crawl. A drop that persists past a month usually traces back to a missing redirect, content that was cut, or a slower template. If the new site is not appearing at all, work through the indexing checklist.

Announcing the new website

Announce the launch once the site is checked and stable, usually a day or two after go-live. Email existing customers with one reason the new site is useful to them, update your website address wherever it appears, and ask a handful of loyal customers for honest feedback. Old links that still work matter more than the announcement itself.

  • Google Business Profile, Bing Places and directory listings point to the right pages
  • Social profiles, email signatures, invoices and printed material updated
  • A short email to customers: what is new, and the one thing they can now do more easily
  • Partners, associations and press who link to you told about any changed addresses

Your email list is the one audience no algorithm can take away, which is the case we make in owned audiences.

Where we fit

studiokalex designs and builds websites. If you are about to launch a site someone else built and want a second pair of eyes on the risky parts, or you are planning a new site from scratch, we are happy to talk it through.

See how we build on our web design page, or get in touch.