The 30-Point Website Launch Checklist (Don't Go Live Without It)

The week before launch is when website projects fall apart. The design is approved, the development is done, everyone is excited — and then the site goes live with a missing favicon, broken contact form, robots.txt blocking Google, and a typo on the homepage that takes 3 days to spot.

Use this 30-point checklist before launching anything. Print it. Tape it to the wall. Don't skip steps because "we'll catch that later." Later is too late.

Content (8 checks)

1. Every page has a unique title tag — no "Untitled Page" or duplicate titles across pages
2. Every page has a meta description — 150–160 characters, sales-focused, not auto-generated
3. All images have alt text — descriptive, not "image1.jpg"
4. No "lorem ipsum" placeholder text — search the source code for "lorem"
5. No broken internal links — every link on every page actually goes somewhere
6. Phone number is consistent everywhere — header, footer, contact page, schema
7. Email address is consistent everywhere — same address used in every place
8. Copyright year in footer is current — and ideally updates automatically

SEO (6 checks)

9. robots.txt is correct — does NOT contain Disallow: / (a launch killer)
10. No "noindex" meta tags — search the source for "noindex"
11. XML sitemap exists at /sitemap.xml — and includes all live pages
12. Sitemap is submitted to Google Search Console — don't wait for them to find it
13. Schema.org markup is in place — at least Organization + LocalBusiness if applicable
14. Open Graph tags work — preview the URL on Facebook/LinkedIn share debugger

Forms & functionality (5 checks)

15. Contact form sends to the right email address — submit a real test
16. Contact form has anti-spam protection — honeypot, captcha, or rate limit
17. Newsletter signup actually saves the email — submit a test, check the database
18. All forms work on mobile — keyboard appears correctly, fields are tappable
19. Thank-you page or confirmation message displays — visitors should know it worked

Performance (4 checks)

20. PageSpeed Insights shows green or close — both mobile and desktop
21. Images are compressed — homepage hero shouldn't be 4 MB
22. Lazy loading is enabled for below-the-fold images
23. No console errors in the browser — open dev tools, refresh, check the Console tab

Security (4 checks)

24. HTTPS is enabled — site loads on https:// without warnings
25. HTTP redirects to HTTPS — try http://yoursite.com and confirm it redirects
26. SSL certificate doesn't expire next week — check expiration date
27. Admin login is protected — strong password, rate limiting, and ideally not at /admin

Tracking (3 checks)

28. Google Analytics is installed — and tracking real visits in real-time
29. Google Search Console is verified — so you can monitor indexing
30. Goal/conversion tracking is set up — at minimum, contact form submissions

The pre-launch ritual

Two days before launch, set aside 90 minutes and do this in order:

1. Open the staging site on your laptop. Click every link in the navigation. Try every form. Submit the contact form. Subscribe to the newsletter.
2. Open the staging site on your phone. Repeat. Pay extra attention to forms.
3. Open the staging site in a different browser (Chrome → Safari, or Firefox). Look for visual differences.
4. Run the homepage through PageSpeed Insights. Fix anything in the red.
5. Run the homepage through the Facebook Sharing Debugger. Confirm it shows your title, image, and description correctly.
6. Run the URL through Google's Rich Results Test. Confirm structured data is detected.
7. Have a second person — anyone, even a non-technical friend — look at the homepage for 30 seconds. Ask: "What does this business do?" If they can't answer, fix it.

Day-of-launch tasks

• Switch DNS — point your domain to the new server
• Wait for DNS propagation — usually 5 minutes to 4 hours
• Verify the new site loads on the live domain — from your phone, on cell data (not WiFi)
• Submit the new sitemap to Google Search Console
• Test the contact form on the live site — do not assume it carried over correctly
• Update Google Business Profile, Facebook, etc. — if any URLs changed

Day-after-launch tasks

• Check Google Analytics — visitors should be showing up
• Check Search Console — indexing should be progressing
• Re-test the contact form (submit a fake inquiry to your own email)
• Check uptime monitoring — is the site actually staying online?
• Re-run PageSpeed Insights on the live site (sometimes performance differs from staging)

The 80/20 of launch success

If you only do five things from this whole list:

1. Verify robots.txt and noindex (the launch killers)
2. Submit a real test of the contact form from a real device
3. Run PageSpeed Insights and fix anything red
4. Make sure analytics is installed and recording
5. Verify HTTPS works and HTTP redirects to it

Those five alone catch 80% of the embarrassing launch problems. The other 25 items catch the remaining 20% — but that 20% is exactly the kind of stuff that makes you look unprofessional to your first 100 visitors.

The bottom line

A great website with a sloppy launch becomes a sloppy website. Spend the 90 minutes. Use the checklist. Don't skip the obvious-looking ones. Most of the launch disasters in the world are the result of someone saying "yeah I checked that" without actually checking it.