What Should You Check Before Your New Website Goes Live?

The days before a launch are busy, which is exactly when minor mistakes slip through. A final check takes an hour or two and can save you from a broken form, a typo on the front page, or a site that Google has been told to ignore. Here is a checklist in plain language.

Content

• Read every page out loud and fix typos
• Check your phone number, email, address and opening hours everywhere they appear
• Remove placeholder text and sample images
• Make sure every photo is the right one and looks sharp
• Confirm that names, prices and claims are accurate

Ask someone who has not seen the site to read it too. Fresh eyes catch what you stopped noticing long ago.

Forms, links and email

• Submit every form and confirm the message arrives where you expect. See also how to stop spam on your contact form
• Click every button and link, including the ones in the footer
• Look at your error page. See what a 404 page is
• If you are replacing an old site, set up redirects so old addresses still work. See what 301 redirects are

How it looks and feels

• View it on a phone, a tablet and a laptop. See what mobile-friendly actually means
• Try the major browsers. See whether your website works in every browser
• Test the speed. See how to tell if your website is fast enough

A private test copy is the safest place to do all of this. See what a staging site is.

Search and sharing basics

• Give each page its own title and description. See what a title tag is
• Make sure nothing tells Google to ignore the site. That setting is sometimes switched on during testing and left on by mistake. See what robots.txt is
• Check the icon in the browser tab and the preview you get when sharing a link. See why your link looks bad on social media
• Plan to add the site to Google's free reporting tool after launch. See what Google Search Console is

Security, legal and backup

• Look for the padlock in the browser. See whether you need a security certificate
• Add a privacy policy and a cookie notice if your site needs them. See whether you need a privacy policy page
• Set up backups, and know who to call if something breaks. See why you need a backup plan

After launch

Check the live site again within a day, because some problems only show up on the real address. Set up visitor statistics so you can see what happens next. See whether you need Google Analytics. A launch is the start of the site's life, not the end of the project.

It also helps to keep a short note of what you checked and when. The next time you update the site, you will be glad to have it.