Launch check: five things to test before your website goes live

Who this is for

Your new website, or a redesign of the old one, goes live soon. It looks good on the screen where you built it. This guide is the short list to run through before you switch over, so a visitor on launch day does not find a dead phone number, a missing privacy page or an address that no longer works.

You do not need technical knowledge for the first four checks. The fifth may need whoever built the site.

The five checks

1. One clear sentence at the top. Open the home page and read only what is visible without scrolling. Can a stranger tell in five seconds what you do, for whom and where? Show it to someone who does not know your business and ask them to say it back. If they cannot, rewrite the first sentence before anything else, because every other check is wasted on a visitor who leaves at once.

2. Contact in two taps. On your own phone, tap the phone number: does the dialer open with the right number? Open the contact form, fill it in and send it: does the message reach the inbox you expect, and does the visitor see a clear confirmation? Test it from a phone on mobile data, not only from the computer you built it on. If a message never arrives, our guide Contact form says “sent” but nothing arrives lists the usual causes.

3. Works on a phone. Open every important page on a real phone. Text should be readable without zooming, nothing may be cut off at the edge, and buttons and links must be easy to hit with a thumb. The accessibility standard WCAG 2.2 asks for tap targets of at least 24 by 24 pixels as a minimum (target size). Turn the phone sideways as well. If pages load slowly, see Your website is slow on phones.

4. Legal pages in place. Link the imprint or legal notice and the privacy page from the footer of every page, in every language you offer, and check that each link opens the right page. Which pages and what they must contain depends on the country you operate in and on what the site does, for example whether it uses analytics, a contact form or cookies. Have a lawyer or the provider of your legal texts confirm the content. Our check is only that the pages exist and can be found.

5. Findable on Google. Give every page its own title and a short description, so a search result says what the page is. Check that a sitemap exists, normally at /sitemap.xml, and tell Google about it in Search Console. If you replace an old site, make each old address redirect to its new equivalent with a permanent redirect (301), so links and rankings are not lost (site moves). Finally make sure the site is not still hidden from search engines by a setting left over from the build phase.

A two-minute self-check

Do these on your phone, on mobile data, with the final address:

• Read the top of the home page: do you know what the business does?
• Tap the phone number, then send the form.
• Scroll the home page and one inner page: nothing cut off, nothing too small.
• Open the imprint and the privacy page from the footer.
• Type the old address of one important page: does it land on the new one?

When to get help

Ask someone experienced if:

• the contact form works for you but messages are missing for others
• you do not know where the legal texts come from or whether they cover your case
• you are moving a larger site and many old addresses must be redirected
• you want the whole list checked by a second pair of eyes before you announce the launch

We run this check with you in a free 30-minute video call: book a call.