Website Launch Checklist: What to Check Before You Go Live
The launches that go wrong rarely fail on design. They fail on a form nobody tested, an email setting that vanished at cutover or a noindex left behind.
This site went live on October 31, 2026. Very little of launch day was design. It was redirecting www to the bare domain, keeping previews out of Google, and a cookie banner.
That’s typical. A new site rarely fails on looks.
It fails on a form nobody tested on a phone, email that stopped arriving after the DNS change, or a staging noindex left behind.
The short version: own every account, test the things that earn you money on the live domain, keep email working through the switch, and name one person to watch the first week.
The 8 checks at a glance
| # | Check | When | About |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Own every account, and name a launch lead | Weeks before | 30 min |
| 2 | Content, links and contact details | Days before | 1 hour |
| 3 | Forms, bookings, checkout and payments | Days before | 1 hour |
| 4 | Phones, keyboards and accessibility | Days before | 1 hour |
| 5 | Privacy, cookies and legal pages | Days before | 1 hour |
| 6 | DNS, HTTPS, email and a way back | Launch day | 1 to 2 hours |
| 7 | Let search engines in, and start measuring | Launch day | 30 min |
| 8 | Watch the first week | First week | 15 min a day |
Before launch
1. Own every account, and name a launch lead
The most expensive launch problem shows up a year later: the domain is registered in the designer’s name, and they’ve stopped answering email.
Before anything goes live, you (the business owner) should hold these accounts, with two-factor authentication on each:
| Account | What to confirm |
|---|---|
| Domain registrar | The owner can log in, the recovery email is theirs, auto-renew is on |
| DNS provider | You’ve exported or screenshotted every current record |
| Hosting or website builder | Owner has admin access and can download a backup |
| Search Console and analytics | Created under a business Google account; the agency is added as a user |
| Email sending and payments | Business accounts, with alerts going to an inbox someone reads |
Then name one launch lead: the person who makes the DNS change, checks the list on the day and decides whether to roll back.
Check it: the owner logs into each account from their own device while you watch.
2. Content, links and contact details
Search your site for “lorem ipsum”, “test”, “example.com” and placeholder prices. Theme demo content has a way of surviving until launch.
Crawl the site with a free tool like Screaming Frog to catch broken links.
Then read every phone number and address out loud. A typo in the phone number costs you calls for months.
Check it: the crawl shows no broken internal links, and you’ve called the phone number and emailed the address listed on the site.
3. Forms, bookings, checkout and payments
This is where a launch earns or loses money. Test every important form on a phone.
For each form, confirm three things: a success message, the lead landing where it should (inbox, CRM, calendar), and a notification to someone.
For a shop, place a real low-value order in live mode, then refund it. Check tax, shipping, the confirmation email, and that the money reaches the owner’s real account.
Check it: a phone submission of each key form shows up in its final destination, and a live order has gone through and been refunded.
4. Phones, keyboards and accessibility
Click through the main journey on a real phone: menu, a key page, the form, checkout. Borrow one running the other system too; iPhones and Androids break in different places.
Then try it with only a keyboard. Can you reach every link and button, and see where you are?
WCAG 2.2, published by the W3C in October 2023, is the practical target. The law depends on where you sell:
- The EU’s European Accessibility Act has applied since 28 June 2025 to some products and services, e-commerce included. Service micro-enterprises are exempt.
- In the US, the Justice Department says businesses open to the public must make their websites accessible under the ADA, without naming one technical standard for them.
An automated checker helps, but a clean score isn’t proof your site works for everyone.
Check it: you’ve completed the main task by keyboard alone, with visible focus, labelled form fields and readable error messages.
5. Privacy, cookies and legal pages
Publish a privacy policy that describes what the site actually collects. A copied template that mentions tools you don’t use is worse than useless.
Visitors in the UK or EU? Then cookies that aren’t strictly necessary need consent before they’re set.
The UK regulator says analytics and advertising cookies don’t count as strictly necessary, apart from narrow exceptions. So you need a banner where “reject” is as easy as “accept”.
Using Google Analytics with ads features? Consent Mode passes the visitor’s choice to Google. It doesn’t replace the banner.
Check it: in a fresh private window, reject optional cookies and confirm analytics doesn’t load; accept, and confirm it does.
Launch day
6. DNS, HTTPS, email and a way back
Take a full backup of the new site and keep the old one reachable, so you can switch back. A day ahead, lower the TTL on the DNS records you’ll change.
When you change DNS, only touch the website records. The MX records that route your email live in the same zone, and overwriting them is the classic way a launch breaks business email.
Then check HTTPS on every version of the address. Pick one public URL, with or without www, and redirect the others to it.
Certificates now last 200 days at most under the CA/Browser Forum’s rules, falling to 47 days by 2029. So renewal has to be automatic.
Check it: after the change,
http://andwwwversions land on your one HTTPS address, and you’ve sent an email to and from the business address.
7. Let search engines in, and start measuring
Staging sites are usually hidden from Google, and those blocks often survive the launch. Check the live site for a noindex tag, a Disallow: / in robots.txt and a leftover password.
Add the site to Search Console as a Domain property, which verifies with a DNS record, and submit your sitemap. Google’s starter guide says “this isn’t required”, but it helps.
Add the site to Bing Webmaster Tools too. A month in, run the technical SEO audit checklist.
For analytics, use Google Analytics 4 or a privacy-focused alternative. Universal Analytics stopped processing data on July 1, 2023.
Two small things readers notice: a favicon (Google recommends one larger than 48 by 48 pixels) and a link preview image for when people share your pages.
Check it: URL Inspection’s live test says your homepage can be indexed, and analytics shows your own visit in real time.
After launch
8. Watch the first week
Launches break in quiet ways. A form stops sending on Wednesday, a page 404s from an old link, the checkout fails for one card type. Someone has to be looking.
For the first week, the launch lead checks once a day:
- the site loads, on HTTPS, from a phone
- new leads, bookings and orders came through
- email is arriving in both directions
- any errors in the host’s logs or in Search Console
Don’t expect Google to index everything in the first few days. New sites take time.
Check it: a daily note for seven days from the launch lead, with anything that broke and when it was fixed.
What’s overrated
- “Submit your site to 500 search engines” services. Google and Bing find a linked, crawlable site on their own. A few real links help more; our link hub lists free places to add a new site.
- A perfect PageSpeed score before launch. Fix anything slow, but a working checkout matters more than a 100.
- Launching with every page finished. Launch with the pages that let someone understand the offer and contact or buy from you; add the rest after.
Why it matters
A new website is a business tool, and on launch day it only has to do two things: take a lead or a sale, and stay up. Everything else can be polished in week two.
So start with checks 1, 3 and 6. Own the accounts, test the money path on a phone, and leave the email records alone when you change DNS.
Replacing a site that already ranks? Then this list isn’t enough: work through the website migration SEO checklist too, so every old URL redirects to its new home.
Running WordPress? Once you’re live, work through the WordPress security checklist in your first month.
Common Questions
What should I check before launching a website?
Start with what costs money if it breaks. Confirm you own the domain and hosting accounts, test every form and checkout on a phone, keep your email DNS records intact when you switch, and remove any staging noindex or password before going live.
How long does it take Google to index a new website?
Days to weeks, usually. Adding the site to Google Search Console and submitting a sitemap helps Google find it, but Google decides when to crawl and index, and a brand-new domain with few links can take longer.
Do I need a cookie banner on my new website?
Yes, if visitors from the UK or EU arrive and your site sets non-essential cookies, such as most analytics and advertising cookies. The UK regulator says those need consent before they’re set, with a reject option as easy to use as accept.
