Launch day should feel like a celebration, not a scramble. Yet many growing businesses go live with broken forms, missing page titles or images that take ten seconds to load on a phone. None of these problems are hard to fix. They are simply easy to forget when everyone is excited to ship.
This checklist is the one we work through before any site goes live. Use it for your next launch, whether you built the site in house or with a partner.
1. Content and copy
Start with the words, because they are what visitors actually read.
- Every page has a clear purpose. If you cannot say what a page is for in one sentence, visitors will not know either.
- No placeholder text. Search the whole site for "lorem ipsum", "TBC" and "coming soon". You will almost always find one.
- Contact details are correct. Check email addresses, phone numbers and links to social profiles.
- Legal pages exist. A privacy policy and terms page are expected, and in many markets they are required.
2. Mobile first, always
Most visitors will meet your site on a phone. Open every page on a real device, not just a resized browser window.
- Tap every button. Are they big enough for a thumb?
- Read the body text without zooming. If you have to pinch, the font is too small.
- Check that menus open and close cleanly and that nothing scrolls sideways.
3. Speed
A slow site loses people before they see your offer. Run your key pages through a free tool such as PageSpeed Insights and look at the mobile score.
The usual culprits are oversized images, too many third party scripts and fonts loaded from several sources. Compress images, serve modern formats like WebP and remove any tracking script nobody is using.
4. Search basics
You do not need an advanced SEO strategy on day one, but you do need the foundations.
- Unique page titles and meta descriptions for every important page.
- One clear heading (H1) per page that says what the page is about.
- A sitemap submitted to Google Search Console.
- Correct canonical tags and domain. Make sure your sitemap and share links point to your real live domain, not a staging address.
- Social share images. Paste your link into a messaging app and check that a proper preview image and title appear.
5. Forms and conversions
Your forms are where visitors become leads, so test them like money depends on it, because it does.
Submit every form yourself. Confirm the message arrives in the right inbox, that the visitor sees a friendly confirmation and that any automatic reply reads well. If you take payments or bookings, run a full test transaction from start to finish.
6. Analytics and tracking
If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it. Install your analytics tool, confirm it records visits and set up at least one goal, such as a form submission or a booking. Add a simple cookie notice if your audience requires one.
7. Redirects from the old site
Replacing an existing website? Map every old address that gets traffic to its new equivalent with a permanent redirect. Skipping this step is the fastest way to lose search rankings you spent years earning.
8. Accessibility
Good accessibility helps everyone. Check that images have alt text, colours have enough contrast, and the site can be navigated with a keyboard alone. These small details also tend to improve search performance.
9. Security and backups
Make sure the site runs on HTTPS everywhere, admin accounts use strong passwords and two factor login, and a recent backup exists before launch.
10. Handover
Finally, make sure your team knows how to run the site after launch. Who can edit pages? Where are the logins stored? Who do you call if something breaks? A clean handover document saves hours of confusion later.
A calm launch is a planned launch
Most launch problems come from small gaps rather than big failures. Work through this list a few days before go live, fix what you find, and launch day becomes the easy part.
Take one example. Harbor and Pine, a fictional furniture brand, nearly launched with a contact form that sent every enquiry to a former employee. A ten minute test caught it. That is the whole point of a checklist: it finds the quiet problems before your customers do.
Ready to build something?
Mashify is a full-stack team on your terms. Start with a one-time project, where you choose your platform, pages and features and see your itemized total before you commit. Or keep building with Mashify Unlimited, one monthly plan for ongoing websites, stores and apps, with requests tracked in your own dashboard.