Website Launch Checklist for 2026: 79 Checks, Plus the First 30 Days

What a website launch checklist covers

Most launch problems are not design problems. A wrong phone number, a form that sends to an inbox nobody reads, a domain that opens the new site without www and the old site with it: those are checks, not judgment calls, and each takes a minute to run.

The technical block is where the site's future search traffic is decided. In Theo's audit of 5,974 small business websites, 48 percent of the 4,027 sites with search data got an estimated zero visitors a month from Google search. The platform and industry splits are in The State of Small Business Websites 2026; a verified Search Console property and a submitted sitemap are the two launch items that start to address that number, which is why they sit on launch day rather than in a later phase.

The checklist is written for a small business owner launching a site built by a freelancer, an agency, a website builder or Theo. Where a step works differently on a Theo site, the section says so.

The website launch checklist at a glance: who does what, and when

Print this table or copy it into a document. Each row is one block of checks below, with who normally runs it and when it happens relative to launch day.

1. New website checklist: finish the pages first

Finish the pages a customer sees before acting: the homepage, the service or product pages, pricing, contact, and any page an ad or listing points to. Read each one as a stranger, then read them together and look for contradictions: a price on the homepage that the service page states differently, a service area on the contact page the homepage never mentions.

1. Homepage: a first-time visitor can tell what the business does, who it serves and what to do next without scrolling.
2. Service or product pages: each covers what is included, the area served, how the work happens and the next step, in that order.
3. Placeholder text: search every page for lorem ipsum, coming soon and the template's stock photos; replace or remove each one.
4. Page titles and descriptions: every public page has its own title and meta description, no two pages share one, and each names the service and the town where that fits.
5. Images: plain-words alt text, files sized for the web, and real photos where a customer expects them (the team, the shop, finished work).
6. Navigation: the menu holds no more than six or seven items, and every page is reachable within two taps from the homepage.
7. 404 page: an address that does not exist shows a page with the menu and a link home, not a blank screen.
8. One next step per page: call, book, request an estimate or buy, matching how the business actually answers. A business that answers the phone leads with the phone; one that quotes by email leads with the form.

2. Business details, proof and legal pages

These six checks catch the mistakes that cost the most after launch: a wrong number on a printed card that points to the site, a license number a customer looks for and does not find, a privacy policy that says the site collects nothing while a pixel fires on every page.

1. Business details: name, phone, email, address, hours and service area match on every page and match Google Business Profile word for word.
2. Licenses and insurance: where the trade requires a license number (plumbers, electricians and contractors, for example), it appears in the footer or on the about page, with the bonded and insured line where that applies.
3. Reviews: real reviews with a first name and a date, placed next to the service they describe; nothing written for launch week.
4. Photos of real work or the real premises on the pages where a customer would want to see them, with a caption that says what the photo shows.
5. Privacy policy: it names what the site actually collects (form fields, analytics, any Meta or TikTok pixel) and how to contact the business about it.
6. Terms, shipping and refund pages where the business sells or takes bookings online; a service business that only takes calls starts with the privacy policy.

3. Pre-launch website checklist: test the site the way a customer uses it

Test on a phone first: that is where a customer coming from a search result or a map listing lands, with one question in mind. Test on a real phone, on cellular data rather than the office Wi-Fi, and test the actions rather than the look.

1. Open the main pages on a phone; text is readable without zooming, nothing is cut off, and the menu opens and closes.
2. Tap every menu item and button on those pages; each opens the page it names, and none opens a preview or draft address.
3. Tap the phone number; the dialer opens with the right number. Tap the email address; the mail app opens with the right recipient.
4. Submit the contact form; the confirmation shows, and the message lands in the inbox that will answer it, not in spam and not in the builder's account.
5. Follow the booking, ordering or checkout path to the end, including the confirmation email, on the tool the business actually uses.
6. Open the site in Safari, Chrome and one other desktop browser; the logo, fonts, colors and spacing are the same on every page, and nothing overlaps.
7. Press Tab through a page on a desktop; links and buttons show a visible outline so keyboard users can follow along.
8. Ask someone who does not know the business to find the main service and the next step without coaching; time it and note where they hesitate.

4. Website go live checklist: the technical block

This is the block that decides whether the site can be found, so every item has a pass condition and whoever runs the check can answer yes or no rather than saying it looks fine.

Point the domain first. Search Console verifies the live address, so a property set up on a preview address has to be redone on the real domain. The owner publishes the refined preview at a temporary address, then connects a domain (both the root and www forms, with forwarding and parking turned off at the registrar and the email records left alone), and on a Theo site analytics and Search Console connect once that domain is active. How the domain connection works walks through each step; the domain usually connects within a few hours of the registrar's records updating, and the old site stays live until then.

5. If the new site replaces an old one: redirects and rankings

A site that replaces an old one has one extra job: keep the addresses and rankings the old site earned. To Google, a new address is a new page, so an old service page that now returns nothing takes its visitors and its links with it. What happens to rankings when you move your website explains the dip that follows a move and how long it lasts; the seven checks here are what keeps it short. On a Theo site, the old addresses that still get traffic or carry links are redirected to the matching new page once Search Console is connected, on every plan; submitting the new pages to Google is part of the growth work on Starter and Pro.

One choice comes first: www or no www. Should my website use www explains the tradeoff; pick one form, with https, and send the other variations to it before the redirect map is built, so every redirect points at the form that will stay.

1. List the old addresses that still get traffic or carry links: the Pages report in Search Console, the old sitemap, and anything printed on cards, vehicles, invoices or directory listings.
2. Map each old address to the closest new page; only the old homepage goes to the new homepage, and a page with no equivalent goes to its nearest parent page.
3. Keep the page titles that already rank where the page still exists; rewrite only the ones that never earned a click.
4. Write down current clicks and impressions for the top ten pages in Search Console, as the baseline for day 30.
5. Carry over the analytics property, the Search Console property and any pixels rather than starting fresh, so the history stays in one place.
6. If the domain itself changes, use the Change of address tool in Search Console after the redirects are live, so Google moves the signals from the old domain to the new one.
7. Keep the old site live until the domain change takes effect, then open the ten most-visited old addresses from a phone and confirm each lands on the mapped page.

6. Launch day: the order to do things in, with timings

This order avoids the two common mistakes: announcing an address before it works everywhere, and setting up Search Console on the preview address. Budget about two hours of work spread across the day, most of the gap being the wait for the domain.

1. Run the page checks and phone tests once more on the final version, then stop making changes (30 minutes).
2. Point the domain, root and www, and turn off forwarding and parking; the old site stays live until the change takes effect, usually within a few hours, so check from a phone on cellular data rather than refreshing a desktop (10 minutes, then the wait).
3. Confirm HTTPS on both addresses and that http sends to https; confirm the www form that stays and that the others land on it (5 minutes).
4. Verify the domain in Search Console, submit the sitemap, and request indexing for the homepage and the main service pages (20 minutes).
5. Confirm analytics shows a real-time visit from a phone, then submit one more test form and read it in the inbox (10 minutes).
6. Update the website link on Google Business Profile, Facebook, Apple Business Connect, Bing Places, Yelp, the email signature and every directory listing; Theo's Boost checklist walks the owner through the business listings (30 minutes).
7. Announce one page, not the homepage: the service page or offer that fits the audience being reached, written out as the full https address (15 minutes).

7. The first 24 hours after launch

The first day is for catching what the launch itself changed: a domain that opens for the owner but not for a customer on another carrier, an old address that now returns nothing, a form that stopped sending when the domain moved. Five checks, ten minutes each.

1. Hour 1: open the site from a phone on cellular data and from a desktop on a different network; both show the new site with the padlock, on root and www.
2. Hour 1: search Google for the business name; the listing and the map result point at the new address, not the old one and not the preview.
3. Hour 2: open the ten most-visited old addresses again and the three most important new pages; none shows a blank page or a redirect loop.
4. Evening: open the Sitemaps report in Search Console; the sitemap shows as processed with the expected number of pages discovered.
5. Next morning: read every form message and missed call from the first day; the first question from a stranger shows what the pages still do not answer.

8. The first 30 days after launch

The launch is the baseline, not the finish. The first month is when Google decides which pages to index, when the first form messages show which questions the site does not answer, and when the old site's rankings either carry over or do not. The Search Console reads in this table are explained step by step in how to get Google to index my site.

Extra launch checks for a service business site

Every site above shares the same checks. Three kinds of small business site add a few of their own, because their customers arrive with a different next step in mind.

A plumber, electrician, cleaner or contractor is hired by phone, often in the middle of a problem. The demo plumbing site below, built by Theo, shows the shape: click-to-call in the header, a page per service, a page per town served, and reviews and license details.

1. Click-to-call in the header on every page, tested from a phone; the number matches Google Business Profile.
2. A page for each main service (repair, drains and water heaters for a plumber), each with its own title and its own next step.
3. A page for each town or service area the business actually drives to, with that town named in the page title.
4. License number, insurance line and reviews placed together, where a customer deciding between two calls will look.

Extra launch checks for a restaurant or booking site

A restaurant, salon or studio is chosen from a phone by someone deciding where to go in the next hour. The demo restaurant site below, built by Theo, has the menu written as text so search engines can read it, the hours and address on every page, and reservation and ordering links to the tools the kitchen already uses.

1. Menu, services or class schedule written as text on the page, not as a PDF or an image, so it reads on a phone and in search.
2. Hours and address on every page, and the map link opens the right pin.
3. Reservation, booking or ordering links open the tool the business actually uses, and a test booking arrives there.
4. Holiday hours, the events or catering page, and any price that changed this season are current on launch day.

Extra launch checks for an online store

A store's launch check is the order itself, end to end, because the site and the checkout are two systems. On a Theo site a Shopify or Wix store connects directly: products, prices and stock appear on the site with a cart, checkout completes on the store, and the owner clicks Refresh my products after a change in the store. A store on Etsy, WooCommerce, Square Online, Big Cartel or Gumroad keeps its checkout, and the Theo storefront links each product to the real listing.

1. Place a real test order from a phone through to the confirmation email, then refund it in the store.
2. Check five products at random: the price, the stock and the photo on the site match the store.
3. Shipping, returns and contact pages exist and say the same thing the store's checkout says.
4. Change one price in the store, refresh the products on the site, and confirm the new price shows.

What the first 90 days after launch can look like: Buy My Lunch

A launch checklist ends on day 30, but the search traffic a site earns is decided over the months that follow. Buy My Lunch, a school lunch ordering service, is a customer site that moved to Theo in June 2026. Its own Search Console data through September 27, 2026 shows 929 clicks from Google search in the last 90 days, up from 131 in the 90 days before, with search impressions up from 7,500 to 61,700 over the same two periods, and the average position moving from 13 to 8 as the growth work published pages.

Two things in that story belong on any launch checklist: keep the Search Console history so the change can be measured, and treat the launch as the first version, with pages added as the growth work goes on. No launch on any platform can promise a particular ranking outcome; what the checklist does is make sure the site starts from a position Google can read.

Website launch mistakes and the fix for each

These six mistakes cause most of what goes wrong at launch. Each has a check above that prevents it; this table names what happens when the check is skipped.

Frequently asked questions