--- title: Website Launch Checklist for Small Businesses | Northline description: "The pre-launch and launch-day checklist our team runs on every website: content, forms, redirects, tracking, speed and the first week after go-live." image: https://www.nopethemes.com/hubfs/northline-blog/northline-blog-launch.jpeg --- [Skip to main content](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/blog/website-launch-checklist#main-content) [![Northline](https://www.nopethemes.com/hubfs/raw_assets/public/studionope-northline/images/brand/northline-logo-light.svg)](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/homepage) - Home - Pages - Resources - Landing Pages - [Pricing](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/pricing) [Book Demo](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/demo) [Homepage Main landing page](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/homepage) [Homepage 2 Alternative layout](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/homepage-2) [Homepage 3 Minimal design](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/homepage-3) Company [About Us Our story](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/about) [Team Meet the team](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/team) [Careers Hiring Join us](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/jobs) [Press News & media](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/press) [Partners Our partners](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/partners) [Changelog Product updates](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/changelog) Products & Services [Features All features](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/features) [Product Product details](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/product) [Services Our services](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/services) [Integrations Connect tools](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/integrations) [Comparison Compare plans](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/comparison) Social Proof [Case Studies Success stories](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/case-studies) [Testimonials What clients say](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/testimonials) [Portfolio Our work](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/portfolio) Contact [Contact Us Send a message](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/contact) [Book a Demo Schedule a call](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/demo) [Appointment Book time](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/demo) [Events Upcoming events](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/events) Learn [Blog Articles & insights](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/blog) [Documentation Guides & API docs](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/documentation) [FAQs Common questions](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/faqs) [Courses New Video training](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/course) Media [Video Library Watch tutorials](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/video-library) [Resources eBooks & guides](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/resources) [Pillar Page In-depth guides](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/pillar) Legal [Privacy Policy How we handle data](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/legal) [Terms of Service Usage terms](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/legal) [Cookie Policy Cookie usage](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/legal) From the Blog [Product Announcing our latest feature updates](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/blog) [Tutorial Getting started with integrations](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/blog) Lead Generation [eBook Download Gated content](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/ebook) [Webinar Signup Event registration](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/webinar) [Waitlist Pre-launch signup](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/waitlist) Conversion [Free Trial Start free](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/free-trial) [Conversion 1 Simple layout](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/conversion-1) [Conversion 2 With features](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/conversion-2) More Templates [Conversion 3 Bold design](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/conversion-3) Search... - 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[Pricing](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/pricing) [Book Demo](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/demo) [HubSpot tips](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/blog/tag/hubspot-tips) [Web design](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/blog/tag/web-design) # The website launch checklist we use on every project [![Olivia Bennett](https://www.nopethemes.com/hubfs/raw_assets/public/studionope-northline/images/v2/team-olivia.jpg) Olivia Bennett Oct 15, 2026](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/blog/author/olivia-bennett) 5 min read ![Team gathered around a laptop celebrating at an office desk](https://www.nopethemes.com/hubfs/northline-blog/northline-blog-launch.jpeg) On this page We have launched a lot of websites since 2014, and the problems that show up on launch day are almost never design problems. They are a form that emails a person who left the company two years ago. A redirect nobody set up, so every old Google result leads to a 404. A tracking code pasted on the staging site but not the live one. None of these are hard to prevent. They just need a list. This is ours, shared so you can use it whether you build your own site or hire someone to do it. ## One week before launch: content Content is the part most likely to slip, so we lock it first. - **Read every page out loud.** You will catch typos, repeated words and sentences that made sense in a draft but not on the page. - **Check every phone number, email address and street address.** Then check them again. Click each phone number on a real phone. - **Replace all placeholder text and images.** Search the site for "lorem," "TBD" and "example.com." - **Confirm prices, hours and staff names** with whoever owns that information in the business. - **Write alt text for meaningful images** so screen readers and search engines know what they show. - **Add your legal pages:** privacy policy, terms if you sell online, and an accessibility statement if you have one. ## One week before launch: forms and email - **Submit every form yourself**, with real data, and confirm the notification arrives in the right inbox. - **Check the thank-you message or page** says what happens next and how long it takes. - **Test the confirmation email** a visitor receives, if you send one. Check the sender name and reply-to address. - **Look in the spam folder.** If your notification lands there, fix your email authentication before launch. - **Confirm the form data lands in your CRM** with the right fields filled in. In HubSpot, open the new contact record and check the form submission appears on the timeline. If your forms have more than five or six fields, now is a good time to read our post on [how many form fields is too many](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/blog/how-many-form-fields). ## Three days before launch: search and redirects This is where most traffic gets lost during a redesign. 1. **Export a list of every URL on the old site.** Your old sitemap, Google Search Console or a crawler will give you this. 2. **Map each old URL to its new home.** If a page no longer exists, point it to the closest match, not the homepage. 3. **Set up 301 redirects** for every changed URL. In HubSpot, this lives under URL redirects in the website settings, and you can import a spreadsheet of them in one go. 4. **Write a unique page title and meta description** for every page. Keep titles under about 60 characters. 5. **Make sure the staging site is not indexed** and the live site will be. One wrong checkbox here can hide a site from Google for weeks. ## Three days before launch: tracking - Install your analytics on the live domain and confirm it records your own visit. - Set up events for the actions that matter: form submissions, phone clicks, booking clicks. - Connect Google Search Console and submit the new sitemap on launch day. - If you run ads, check that conversion tracking fires on the new thank-you pages. - Check that your cookie banner works and reflects what you actually track. ## Two days before launch: devices and speed - **Test on real devices:** an iPhone, an Android phone, a laptop and a desktop. Simulators miss things. - **Test in Safari, Chrome and Firefox** at minimum. - **Tab through the main pages with a keyboard only.** You should be able to reach every link and button and see where you are. - **Run a speed test** on the homepage and one inner page. Compress any image larger than a few hundred kilobytes. We go deeper on this in [page speed for owners](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/blog/page-speed-for-owners). - **Check the 404 page** exists, looks like the rest of the site and offers a way back. ## Launch day We launch on a Tuesday or Wednesday morning, never on a Friday and never right before a holiday. If something goes wrong, you want a full working week and a rested team. 1. Point the domain and confirm the SSL certificate is active (the padlock shows and http redirects to https). 2. Click through every page in the main navigation and footer. 3. Submit every form one more time on the live domain. 4. Test five or six of the most important old URLs to confirm the redirects work. 5. Submit the sitemap in Google Search Console. 6. Tell your team the site is live and ask each person to look at the pages about their work. ## The first week after launch Launch is not the finish line. For the first week, we check a few things every day: - Search Console for crawl errors and pages Google cannot reach - Analytics for pages with unusually high exit rates - Form submissions, to confirm leads are still coming in at the usual pace - Any messages from customers who could not find something When Willamette Pediatrics launched their new site with us last spring, the day-three check caught a broken link to their patient portal from a page we had not expected anyone to use. It turned out to be one of the most visited pages on the site. That is exactly why the first week matters. ## Make the list yours Copy this list into a shared document and add the things specific to your business: a booking tool, an online store, a members area. Assign a name to each line. A checklist with owners gets done. A checklist without them gets read. If you are planning a new site and would rather hand the list to someone else, see [how we work](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/services) or [start a conversation](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/contact). Share this article: ![Olivia Bennett](https://www.nopethemes.com/hubfs/raw_assets/public/studionope-northline/images/v2/team-olivia.jpg) Written by ### [Olivia Bennett](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/blog/author/olivia-bennett) Olivia Bennett is co-founder and Creative Director at Northline. She sets the look of every site the studio ships and signs off each homepage herself. ## You may also like [![Northline](https://www.nopethemes.com/hubfs/raw_assets/public/studionope-northline/images/brand/northline-logo-light.svg)](https://www.nopethemes.com/northline/homepage) Websites for service businesses that win on trust. 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