Website Launch Checklist: What to Test Before You Go Live

Key Points

This website QA (testing and quality checks) checklist is for business owners, founders, marketers, agencies, developers, and testing teams. Here is the short version:

• Check every page on phones, tablets, laptops, and large screens.
• Test every form, link, and button, and confirm where each message goes.
• Open every page address directly, and make sure a refresh does not break it.
• Check what search engines see, and check your legal pages, before launch.

How Do You Check the Look on Every Screen?

Check your website on a phone, a laptop, and a desktop. A professional website must be checked on all 3.

Look for text that overlaps, broken spacing, and buttons too small to tap. Also look for pages that scroll sideways, main text at the top that is hard to read, and images that do not load.

Screen and Design Checks

• Check every main section on phone, tablet, laptop, and large desktop screens.
• Test the buttons, the menu, the WhatsApp and contact buttons, the footer links, and the back-to-top button.
• Make sure the favicon (the small icon in the browser tab), logo, social media previews, images, animations, and hover effects look planned.

Which Parts of the Site Should You Test?

Test every path a visitor can take before launch. That means forms, email alerts, phone links, WhatsApp links, and page refresh.

Also test your legal pages, service pages, and the 404 page (the page people see when a link is broken). Check your sitemap (a list of your pages for search engines). Check your robots.txt file (a file that tells search engines which pages to read).

Functional Checks

• Send a test through your contact and consultation forms, then check where each request arrives.
• Open every page address directly in the browser, and make sure a refresh does not break the page.
• From the footer links, check all legal pages, the cookie policy, the service policy, the disclaimer, and the ways to contact you.

What Should You Check for Search Engines and Trust?

Before launch, check your page titles, headings, and meta descriptions (the short text under your link in search results). Search engines and clients both need clear signals.

Also check your sitemap, robots.txt, and structured data (labels that help search engines understand your page). Then check your domain and local setup, and the parts of your site that build trust.

Search and Trust Checks

• After your domain points to the live site, submit the sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
• Make sure your domain does not show a parked page, a test site address, the wrong favicon, or old content.
• Each month, add useful articles that answer real buyer questions and link to your service pages.

Questions About Website Launch Checks