Website launch checklist

Content

• All pages have final, approved texts — no placeholder text or "lorem ipsum".
• Prices, contacts, addresses and working hours are correct in every language.
• Images are final, optimised and have meaningful alt text where needed.
• Legal pages are published: privacy policy, terms of sale if selling, cookie information.
• Spelling checked in every language, including Azerbaijani special letters.
• 404 page is helpful, with links to main sections.

Forms and functions

• Every form submits, shows a confirmation and delivers to the right inbox, CRM or messenger.
• Auto-reply emails arrive and do not land in spam.
• Validation messages are clear; required fields make sense.
• Bot protection works without blocking real users.
• Payments tested in live mode with a real transaction and refund, if applicable.
• Booking, search, filters and customer accounts work.
• Integrations with CRM, 1C, delivery services run and log correctly.

SEO settings

• Staging "noindex" tags and password protection removed.
• robots.txt allows crawling of public content and blocks only technical sections.
• XML sitemap generated from real pages, with language alternates where relevant, and submitted in Search Console. See XML sitemaps and robots.txt.
• Every page has a unique title and meta description, in its language.
• Canonical tags point to the live domain, not staging.
• hreflang set correctly on multilingual pages.
• Structured data validated.
• One version of the domain (with or without www, HTTPS) with redirects from the others.

Redirects (for redesigns and migrations)

• Every old URL redirects with a 301 to its new equivalent.
• Redirect map tested against the full list of old URLs, including images and PDFs with traffic.
• No redirect chains or loops.

See redirects when changing a website.

Analytics

• GA4 or other analytics installed on the live domain.
• Key events fire correctly: forms, calls, messenger clicks, purchases.
• Internal traffic filtered.
• Ad platform conversion tags and pixels work.
• Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools verified.

Speed and devices

• Pages tested on real phones and desktops, in the main browsers.
• Core Web Vitals and loading speed checked on key templates.
• Fonts include all characters for every language.

Security

• HTTPS on every page, certificate valid, no mixed content.
• Admin accounts use strong passwords and two-factor authentication.
• Default and test accounts removed.
• Backups configured and a restore tested.
• Monitoring of availability and certificate expiry enabled.

See security checklist before launch.

Launch day

• Launch early in the week and early in the day, with the team available.
• Lower DNS TTL in advance if the domain moves; copy email records exactly.
• After the switch, check key pages, forms and payment on the live domain.
• Submit the sitemap; request indexing of key pages in Search Console.
• Announce to customers if relevant.

First weeks after launch

• Monitor Search Console for crawl errors and indexing issues.
• Compare traffic, rankings and enquiries with the previous period.
• Check that forms and integrations continue to deliver.
• Collect feedback from the team and customers and fix issues quickly.