The Website Launch Checklist
Everything that has to be true before a site goes live, in the order to check it. The redirect step is the one that costs when skipped.
The guide
Work down it with a pen. Print it, or save the page.
Launch day is where a good project quietly loses six weeks of search traffic, or where a form stops delivering and nobody notices until someone mentions they wrote twice.
None of it is difficult. All of it is boring, which is why it gets skipped. Work down this list in order. Most of it can be done days before you switch anything.
Two weeks out
- Build the redirect map. Every address on the old site pointed at its new home. Export the old URL list from analytics or the old sitemap, not from memory.
- Decide what gets retired. Old pages with no traffic and no purpose do not need a new home, but they do need to go somewhere sensible rather than a dead end.
- Confirm who controls the domain. You should be able to log into the registrar yourself. If you cannot, sort that out now, not on launch day.
- Note where email is hosted. Moving a website can break mail if nobody checks. Write down the current mail records before anything changes.
- Agree the launch window. A Tuesday morning when everyone is around. Not the night before a trade show, not the Friday before a holiday.
One week out
- Proofread every page out loud. You will catch things your eye skips.
- Check every page has its own title and description. No “Home”, no “Untitled”, no duplicates.
- Check headings make sense on their own. One main heading per page, in order.
- Check every image has alt text, and that decorative images have empty alt rather than a filename.
- Test the site on a phone, off wifi. Not a simulator. A phone, on cellular, away from the office.
- Check the phone number is tappable on every page it appears.
- Confirm the number matches your Google Business Profile and your directory listings exactly.
- Check hours and service areas against the listing. They must agree.
- Set up the analytics property so it starts collecting on day one.
The day before
- Lower the domain time to live so the switch propagates quickly.
- Take a full backup of the old site, files and database, stored somewhere other than the server.
- Confirm the old site stays available on a temporary address for a week.
- Have the rollback plan written down. Who does what, in what order, if it goes wrong.
Launch day, in order
1. Switch the domain. Both the plain and the www version, agreeing with each other.
2. Confirm the certificate. Load the site and check there is no browser warning. If there is, stop and fix it before telling anyone.
3. Run the redirects. Take your list and check each one lands where it should on the live site. Not on staging. Live. This is the step people skip and it is the one that costs.
4. Submit a real form. From a phone, on cellular. Check it arrives in the inbox a person actually watches. Then submit the second form, if you have one.
5. Call the phone number on the site. From a phone that is not on your network. Check it rings where you expect.
6. Check the error page. Visit an address that does not exist and confirm you get your own page, not a host default.
7. Confirm analytics is recording. Open the live site and check the visit appears.
8. Submit the sitemap in Search Console, and confirm the sitemap lists the live domain rather than the staging one.
9. Check the site is not blocking search engines. View the source and search for “noindex”. Open the robots file and check there is no blanket disallow. This is the most common launch mistake in the entire industry.
10. Update the Google Business Profile link if the address of your main landing page changed.
The week after
- Watch the form inbox daily. A form that breaks on day three looks exactly like a quiet week.
- Check Search Console for crawl errors. Some redirects will have been missed. There are always some.
- Keep the old site on standby until the new one has been quiet and correct for several days.
- Watch your rankings, but not hourly. A dip in the first fortnight is normal. A dip that is still there after six weeks is a redirect problem.
- Confirm backups are running on the new site, and restore one somewhere safe to prove it works.
The handover
Launch is not finished until you have been given the keys. Before you sign anything off:
- Registrar, hosting, and content system logins, in your name
- A written note of what lives where, and who to contact for each part
- Confirmation of what you can edit yourself
- The backup schedule and how to get a copy
- What the next twelve months cost, in total
If something goes wrong
It usually will, in a small way. The order that keeps it small:
- Is the site loading at all? If not, roll back and diagnose calmly.
- Are forms delivering? This is the one that costs money silently.
- Is anything returning an error that used to work? Redirects.
- Everything else can wait until Wednesday.
A site that goes live three days late and works is better than one that launches on schedule and drops half its inquiries for a month.
The Website Launch Checklist · Strataveo · strataveo.com/guides/website-launch-checklist
Keep a copy
Nothing here sits behind a form. Take it, use it, send it to whoever you like.
This one lives on the page rather than in a download. It is laid out to print: the site chrome drops away, the checkboxes come out as boxes you can tick, and it fits on paper you can write on.
If you would rather we sent it to you, or you want it adapted for your trade, use the contact form and say which guide.
Tell us what you need built.
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- Send a short brief, or just a link to the site you have now.
- We reply within two business days with questions, or a time to talk.
- You get scope, sequence and a price range in writing before anything starts.