What a serious website launch checklist includes (ours, published).

Every agency says they test before launch. Ask to see the checklist, and
the conversation gets vague — because for many, “we checked everything” is a
feeling, not a list. Feelings miss things. Lists don’t.

What slips through unlisted launches: forms that send to a developer’s
test inbox, beautiful pages that take six seconds on a phone, redirects nobody
mapped (taking years of Google equity with them), and accessibility failures
that surface as complaints — or legal letters — months later.

Why we publish it

Publishing our checklist keeps us honest twice: you can hold us to it, and
we can’t skip steps without noticing. Use it on your own launch, hand it to
whoever you hire, or use it to interview agencies — anyone doing serious work
will recognize every line. Here is the substance of what we run on every build.

1. Clarity & content

• Every page passes the ten-second test: what is this, why does it matter, what do I do next?
• One H1 per page; headings in logical order; titles ≤ 60 characters, descriptions ≤ 155.
• No lorem ipsum, no placeholder images, no “coming soon” pages reachable from navigation.
• Every page has exactly one primary call to action. No dead-end pages anywhere.
• Phone numbers, addresses, hours, and emails verified — not assumed.

2. Performance

• LCP under 2.5s on mobile, tested 4G-throttled — not on office Wi-Fi.
• INP under 200ms; CLS under 0.1 (nothing jumps while loading).
• Key pages under 1MB; images compressed, sized, and lazy-loaded below the fold.
• Fonts: maximum 2 families, self-hosted, with font-display: swap.
• Tested with PageSpeed Insights and a real low-end phone.

3. Accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA basics)

• Full keyboard pass: every menu, form, and control operable without a mouse, with visible focus.
• Text contrast ≥ 4.5:1, checked in both themes if the site has them.
• Every image has appropriate alt text; decorative images get empty alt.
• Form fields labeled; errors announced in text, not color alone.
• Semantic landmarks, skip-to-content link, prefers-reduced-motion respected.

4. Forms & email

• Every form submitted for real — and the notification received at the real inbox.
• Autoresponders send; SPF/DKIM/DMARC verified so mail lands in inboxes, not spam.
• Spam protection live (honeypot + challenge), tested not to block humans.
• Submissions logged somewhere recoverable — email alone is not a record.

5. Security

• SSL forced sitewide; security headers set (HSTS, content-type options, referrer policy).
• 2FA on every admin account; unique usernames; login rate-limited.
• Daily offsite backups configured — and a restore actually tested once.
• File editing disabled in the dashboard; least-privilege roles for every user.

6. SEO & analytics

• 301 redirect map for every old URL that mattered — the most expensive thing to forget.
• XML sitemap submitted; robots.txt sane; canonical tags correct.
• Organization and Service schema in place; OG cards render properly when shared.
• Analytics live with conversion events (form, booking, call clicks) — verified firing.

7. The week after

Launch isn’t the finish line; it’s the handoff into real traffic. In the
first week we monitor uptime and form deliveries daily, watch Search Console
for crawl errors and redirect misses, and fix what real visitors surface that
staging never could. Then the site moves onto
a care plan —
because every item on this list decays without one.

One more thing worth saying: we run this same list on
our own builds and on
this site. A checklist you exempt yourself from is marketing, not method.