The Pre-Launch Checklist: 10 Things to Verify Before Your Website Goes Live

Before any website goes live, verify ten things: every form delivers, every page works on a phone, the site loads fast, search engines can read it, analytics are recording, redirects are set, errors are handled, accounts are yours, backups exist, and someone has tested the whole thing like a stranger would. An hour on this list prevents most launch-day embarrassments.

Make sure the site works for real visitors

Start with the things customers touch. 1. Submit every form and confirm the message actually arrives in the inbox you expect, including the spam folder. A contact form that silently fails is the most expensive bug a small site can have. 2. Test on a real phone, not just a narrowed desktop window. Tap every button, open the menu, and read the text without zooming. 3. Click every link, including the footer, and check that nothing points to a staging address or a placeholder page. 4. Run a speed check with a free tool such as Lighthouse in Chrome. Oversized images are the usual culprit, and compressing them is a ten-minute fix that often halves load time.

Make sure people (and search engines) can find it

5. Check titles and descriptions. Each page needs its own title and meta description, written for a human reading a search result. 6. Remove any noindex tag left over from staging; forgetting this one can keep a new site out of Google for weeks. 7. Submit a sitemap in Google Search Console and confirm your canonical URLs use the final domain, with a single version (www or not) redirecting to the other. 8. Set up analytics and verify it records your own test visit. Launching without measurement means your first week of data is gone forever.

Make sure you are protected and in control

9. Confirm HTTPS works everywhere and that old URLs, if you are replacing an existing site, redirect to their new equivalents. Skipping redirects quietly throws away the search traffic you already earned. 10. Confirm ownership and backups. Domain, hosting, analytics, and email service should all sit in accounts you control, and the code should live in a repository you own. Know how to restore the site if something breaks, and add a friendly 404 page so a mistyped link does not dead-end a customer.

A final tip: ask someone who has never seen the site to complete one real task, like booking a call or buying a product, while you watch silently. Five minutes of watching a stranger struggle reveals more than any tool. Then launch early in the week, not Friday evening, so any issue gets fixed while people are at their desks.

This is the checklist we run ourselves before handing a project over. Because RocketDevs ships in 1 to 10 days at a fixed price, launch checks are part of the build rather than an add-on, and you receive the full code and every account key when it goes live.