The Website Launch Checklist

Most launch failures are not dramatic. The site goes live, looks fine, and quietly loses half its search traffic because a staging directive came with it, or because nobody mapped the old URLs.

This checklist covers what to verify before and after going live.

Two weeks before

Content and legal

• All placeholder text removed - search the site for "lorem" and "TODO"
• Contact details correct everywhere, including the footer
• Privacy policy, terms, and refund or returns policy published and accurate
• Cookie or consent notice in place if required - see our privacy compliance guide
• Copyright year and company registration details correct

Redirect map

• Export every URL from the old site
• Map each to its closest equivalent on the new site
• Redirect permanently, one hop, never through a chain
• Never redirect everything to the homepage - it is treated as a soft error and discards the page's history
• Include old sitemaps, feeds, and any linked PDFs

This is the single most valuable pre-launch task for an existing site.

One week before

Technical

• Remove any noindex directive from the staging environment
• Check robots.txt does not disallow anything important
• HTTPS working, with the certificate valid and auto-renewing
• One canonical host, with the alternative redirecting
• Self-referencing canonical tags present
• 404 page returns a real 404 status and offers a route back
• Sitemap generated, accurate, and referenced in robots.txt

Performance

• Test key pages on a mid-range phone with a throttled connection
• Images compressed, sized, and with dimensions set
• No render-blocking scripts before content
• Fonts limited and loading without hiding text
• Third-party scripts inventoried and justified - see page speed

Functionality

• Every form submitted end to end, with the notification received and the record created
• Payment tested with a real transaction, including a deliberate failure
• Search returns sensible results, including for misspellings
• All widgets render and behave correctly - see the embed snippet guide
• Every external link opens correctly

Launch day

• Take a full backup of the old site, including the database
• Lower DNS time-to-live in advance so changes propagate quickly
• Deploy during your quietest hours
• Verify the site loads from a different network and device
• Check pages render for search engines using a URL inspection tool
• Confirm analytics is recording, and firing once rather than twice
• Submit the sitemap in Search Console
• Spot-check twenty of your most important redirects manually

The first 48 hours

• Watch server error logs for 500s
• Watch 404 logs and add redirects for anything with real traffic
• Check Search Console for coverage errors and manual actions
• Confirm form submissions are arriving, not silently failing
• Compare traffic and conversion with the same period before launch
• Test checkout again from a fresh device

The first two weeks

• Review indexing status; expect fluctuation, but investigate large drops
• Check Core Web Vitals field data as it accumulates
• Review the top landing pages against expectations
• Collect the issues everyone noticed but did not report
• Fix in order of revenue impact, not annoyance

The checks people forget

• The email that forms send. Test that it arrives and is not filtered as spam.
• Favicon and social share images. Share a link in a chat app and see what appears.
• The 404 page itself. It is often unstyled.
• Print styles, if customers print invoices or menus.
• The site with an ad blocker enabled.
• Old email campaign links pointing at pages that no longer exist.
• QR codes on printed material pointing at old URLs.

Common mistakes to avoid

• A staging noindex left in production. The most damaging launch error there is.
• Redirecting everything to the homepage. It throws away the value of every old page.
• Launching on a Friday. Nobody is available when something breaks.
• No backup of the old site. Rollback becomes impossible.
• Testing only on the machine that built it. Test on a real phone on mobile data.

Frequently asked questions

What is the most important pre-launch check?

Removing any staging noindex directive and verifying your redirect map. Those two account for the majority of serious post-launch traffic losses.

Will my traffic drop after a redesign?

Some fluctuation is normal for a few weeks while search engines recrawl. A large sustained drop usually means missing redirects, a blocking directive, or content that was removed rather than migrated.

How long should old URLs redirect?

Indefinitely where practical, and for at least a year at minimum. Links and bookmarks persist far longer than most teams expect, and removing redirects later reintroduces the loss.

Should I launch a redesign all at once?

For a small site, yes, with a rehearsed plan. For a large or complex site, a phased rollout by section reduces risk and makes problems easier to attribute.

Next steps

Build your redirect map first - it is the task most often skipped and most expensive to skip. Then rehearse the full purchase or enquiry journey on a real phone before you go live.

Start free and check every widget renders on the new site before launch day.