Most launch failures are not dramatic. They are a form that emails nobody, a sitemap nobody submitted, a redirect nobody wrote. This is the checklist we run before and after every site goes live.
Two weeks out: the foundations
Domain and DNS. Register the domain in the client's account, never ours. Confirm the registrant email is one that gets read — renewal notices to a dead address are how domains expire. Point DNS at the host, set TTLs low while you are still moving things.
Hosting and SSL. Provision the host, force HTTPS, and confirm the certificate renews automatically. Enable HSTS only after HTTPS is confirmed everywhere, including any www/non-www redirect.
Environment variables. API keys live in the host's secret store, not in the repository. Verify the production build reads them — a key that works locally and fails in production is the classic Friday-night bug.
Redirect map. If the site replaces an existing URL structure, write the 301 map now, not after launch. Every old URL that returns 404 is lost equity. Test a sample with curl before you ship.
One week out: the content and the craft
Copy proofread. Real names, real prices, real dates. Have someone who did not write it read it aloud.
Forms tested end to end. Submit from a phone on cellular data. Check the confirmation message, the email delivery, the spam folder, and the failure path. Add a honeypot field so you are not collecting bots.
Accessibility pass. Tab through the whole site. Every interactive element needs a visible focus state, every image needs meaningful alt text, and every heading needs to follow a logical order. Run it with reduced-motion enabled and confirm nothing is lost.
Responsive check. 360, 390, 768, 1024, 1440. Look for horizontal scroll — it is the most common mobile defect and the easiest to miss on a laptop.
Performance. Explicit width and height on every image. AVIF or WebP. Fonts subset with display: swap. Third-party scripts deferred. Aim for LCP under 2.5s on a throttled mobile connection.
Launch day: the technical list
Metadata. Unique title and description per page, one h1, self-referencing canonicals, Open Graph image rendering correctly when pasted into Slack and LinkedIn.
Structured data. Organization and WebSite sitewide, Service on service pages, FAQPage where questions are visible, BreadcrumbList on inner pages, Article on posts. Validate in the Rich Results test and fix warnings — a schema error silently costs you the enhancement.
Robots and sitemap. robots.txt allowing crawlers and disallowing internal paths, sitemap.xml submitted in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Confirm staging paths are excluded.
Analytics events. Verify pageviews arrive, then the events that matter: CTA clicks, demo opens, form submissions. Check for duplicate tracking — two tags inflate everything.
Security headers. X-Content-Type-Options, Referrer-Policy, correct X-Frame-Options. Confirm your own embeds still work.
Crawl it. Run a crawler against the live site and look for broken links, orphan pages and redirect chains. Fix them before telling anyone the site is live.
The first week after: where most people stop
Monitor. Uptime checks, error logs, and Search Console's coverage report. Watch for a spike in 404s from URLs you forgot to map.
Watch Core Web Vitals. Field data takes a few days to appear. If LCP regresses, the cause is usually an image nobody compressed.
Collect real feedback. Watch five people use the site. The problems they hit are worth more than any audit.
Set a review date. Thirty days out, review traffic, top pages and anything the data contradicts about your assumptions.
The ongoing rhythm
Publish something useful at least monthly — a page answering a real customer question does more for search than another round of meta tag tweaks. Check Search Console monthly for queries you almost rank for; those are the cheapest wins available.
This checklist is the same one we run on every launch and deployment engagement, alongside technical SEO and ongoing support. If you would rather not own it, start a project and we will hand you a site that is already checked.