Website Launch Day Checklist: Verify These Before Going Live

Launch day has a strange psychology. Everyone is excited, everyone wants to share the link, and nobody wants to be the person saying "wait, did we test the form?" So the form goes untested, and the first three weeks of enquiries land in a void. A website launch day checklist exists to make caution automatic. This is the one we run at WebsNP before any client site goes live, trimmed to what actually breaks.

Before You Touch DNS

  • Final content proofread by someone who did not write it. Fresh eyes catch the "Kathamndu" typos.
  • Phone numbers and email addresses clicked, not just read. A wrong digit costs real customers.
  • Placeholder text hunted down. Search the site for "lorem" and for your template's demo brand name.
  • Favicon and social sharing image set. The link people share on Facebook should not preview as a grey box.
  • A full backup of the old site taken, if one exists. Rollback beats regret.

The Technical Checks That Prevent Ugly Surprises

  • SSL certificate installed and forced: every http URL must redirect to https.
  • Only one canonical address: www and non-www should not both serve the site separately.
  • 404 page exists and looks intentional, with a link home.
  • Daily backups scheduled on the new hosting, and one test restore actually performed.
  • Site speed sanity check on mobile data, not office WiFi. If it crawls on Ncell 4G, fix images before launch, not after.

Test Every Form Like a Suspicious Customer

Forms deserve their own section because they fail silently. Submit each one with real data. Confirm the email arrives, and check spam, because notifications from freshly launched domains often land there. Verify the reply-to address works. If you use WhatsApp or Viber click-to-chat buttons, tap them from an actual phone. One untested form on a site we once inherited had been quietly discarding enquiries for eleven months. Nobody knew, which is exactly the problem.

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Switch On Measurement Before Visitors Arrive

  • Google Analytics (or your preferred tool) installed and receiving data.
  • Google Search Console verified, sitemap submitted.
  • Google Business Profile updated with the new URL, vital for local searches like "dentist near me" in Kathmandu or anywhere else.
  • Old URLs redirected to their new equivalents if this is a redesign, so years of Google ranking do not evaporate at midnight.

The First Two Hours After Go-Live

DNS changes take time to spread, so check the site on a different network than your office, ideally mobile data. Click through every page once. Submit a form again from the live domain. Then, and only then, announce the launch. At WebsNP launches come with free post-launch support, 15 days on Starter up to 6 months on Enterprise, so when something odd surfaces on day three, someone answers. Launch is not the finish line. It is the first day the site starts earning, which is precisely why it deserves a checklist instead of a countdown.