Website launch checklist: what to test before you go live

What should you check before launching a website?

Before launching a website, check five areas: the content, every form and button, how it works on phones, the search engine settings, and tracking and legal pages. Most launch problems come from small, forgettable details, such as a contact form that sends to an old inbox, rather than from the design itself.

Give yourself time. Testing should start several days before the planned launch, not on the morning of it, and the launch itself is best done early in the week, so problems can be fixed while everyone is at work.

How do you check content and design before launch?

Check content by reading every page as a customer would, on a phone, from top to bottom. It is slow, but it is the only way to catch the mistakes customers will notice first.

• No placeholder text or images left anywhere, including footers, alt text and page titles.
• Contact details are identical everywhere: phone number, address, email and opening hours match your Google Business Profile.
• Prices, packages and offers are current, and old promotions have been removed.
• Every link works, including social icons, footer links and links in blog posts.
• Images are compressed and sized correctly, with descriptive alt text.
• A favicon is set, so your logo appears in browser tabs and bookmarks.
• The 404 page is helpful, with a search box or links back to key pages.
• Both languages are complete on a bilingual site, with a working language switcher on every page.
• Legal pages exist: privacy policy, cookie policy and terms, where relevant.

Ask someone who has never seen the site to try one task, such as finding a price or booking a consultation. Their hesitation tells you more than your own review will.

How do you test forms, bookings and buttons?

Test forms and bookings by using them exactly as a customer would, then checking that the result arrives where your team will actually see it. A beautiful website with a broken form is worse than no website, because customers think they have contacted you.

1. Submit every form with realistic test details, on desktop and on a phone.
2. Find each message: the right inbox, not the spam folder, and your CRM or spreadsheet if one is connected.
3. Check the auto-reply that the customer receives, including the sender name and wording.
4. Confirm the thank-you message or page appears and tells people what happens next.
5. Tap every call, LINE and WhatsApp button on a real phone.
6. Complete a booking end to end, including confirmation and reminder messages, then cancel it.
7. Run a test payment in the payment provider’s test mode if you take deposits or sell online.
8. Check email authentication (SPF, DKIM and DMARC records) so your website’s emails are not marked as spam.

Write down anything that fails, fix it, and test it again. A form that worked last week can break after a small change to the page or the email settings.

What SEO checks matter on launch day?

The most important SEO check on launch day is making sure search engines are allowed to see the new site. Staging sites are usually hidden from Google with a “noindex” setting or a blocking robots.txt file, and forgetting to remove it is one of the most common and costly launch mistakes.

• Remove noindex and check robots.txt is not blocking important pages.
• Set up 301 redirects from every old URL to its closest new page, so existing rankings, links and bookmarks carry over.
• Give every page a unique title and meta description that describes what the page offers.
• Use one clear H1 per page, with logical headings beneath it.
• Create an XML sitemap and submit it in Google Search Console.
• Add structured data, such as your organisation or local business details.
• Set Open Graph images and titles so links shared on LINE, WhatsApp and social media show a proper preview.
• Force HTTPS, so every version of every page loads securely without warnings.

Our new website SEO checklist goes deeper on each of these.

How do you check mobile, speed and accessibility before launch?

Check mobile, speed and accessibility on real devices and with free tools, not only in a desktop browser shrunk to phone size. Most of your visitors will arrive on a phone, often on mobile data.

• Test on real phones: at least one iPhone and one Android device, in Safari and Chrome.
• Run PageSpeed Insights on your key pages and fix the biggest issues it reports, usually oversized images, heavy scripts or slow fonts.
• Aim for good Core Web Vitals: Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint within 200 milliseconds and Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less.
• Navigate with a keyboard only, using Tab and Enter, to check that menus, forms and buttons can be reached and that focus is visible.
• Check text contrast and that pages still work when zoomed in.

These checks overlap with our guides to website speed and website accessibility, which explain the fixes in detail.

What should you do in the first 30 days after launch?

In the first 30 days after launch, watch for problems, tell the world the new site exists, and start collecting data. A launch is the start of the website’s working life, not the end of the project.

1. Day one: submit a test enquiry, confirm analytics is recording visits and key events, and check the site on a phone outside your office Wi-Fi.
2. First week: check Search Console for crawl errors and pages that are not indexed, and fix any 404s from old URLs you missed.
3. First week: update your website link on your Google Business Profile, social media bios, email signatures and any directories.
4. First two weeks: confirm that automatic backups are running and that you can access the hosting, domain and analytics accounts.
5. Throughout: ask recent customers for reviews, using a simple Google reviews strategy.
6. Day 30: review your first month of data and choose one improvement, as described in what to track on your website.

At PJW Partners, most websites launch in 3 to 6 weeks, and the checks above are part of how we finish a project. If you are planning a new website and want it launched properly, tell us about your business.

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