Website Launch Checklist: 6 Things to Check Before You Send Your Link to Anyone

You just built a website. It looks finished. That is exactly the moment to be suspicious, because "looks finished" and "works" are two different things, and the difference is only visible when you actually test it.

Here is the honest version of a launch checklist: six things to check before you send your link to a single person. Most of this takes under an hour. None of it needs code. If something fails, fix it before you share, not after, because the first impression you get on the internet is usually not repeatable.

1. Does it load fast on a phone?

Most people who open your link will be on a phone, probably on mobile data, probably not patient. Do not judge this by shrinking your laptop browser window. Judge it on a real handset.

• Open your own link on your phone. Turn off Wi-Fi first so you are seeing the worst realistic case, not your fastest connection.
• Time it in your head. If the main text and image take longer than about three seconds to appear, that is too slow. Google's own guidance is that a page should show its main content within 2.5 seconds, and anything past 4 seconds counts as a poor experience.
• Run it through Google's free speed checker: pagespeed.web.dev. Paste your URL, look at the Mobile tab. Ignore the big score number; read the metric rows under it. The one that matters most is "Largest Contentful Paint", a plain way of saying "how long until the main thing is visible." Keep it under 2.5 seconds.
• Scroll the whole page with one thumb. Text too small to read without zooming? Buttons too close together to tap without hitting the wrong one? Menu that won't close? Those are launch blockers, not polish.

One honest note: Google retired its old Mobile-Friendly Test tool in December 2023, so there is no single "is my site mobile-friendly" button anymore. PageSpeed Insights covers the speed side. The feel side is your thumb.

2. Does every button and link actually work?

Click everything. Not most things. Everything. The obvious buttons and the forgotten ones.

• Every item in the top menu and the footer.
• Every call-to-action button on every page ("Get started", "Book now", "See pricing").
• Links to social profiles, and make sure they go to your profile, not the template's placeholder account.
• Phone numbers and email addresses, on a phone, these should open the dialler or mail app, not do nothing.
• Any link meant to open a document, booking page, or payment page.
• Links in images and logos.

Then do two extra passes that most people skip:

• Type each page address directly into the browser bar. Take your homepage address and add /about, /pricing, /contact to the end of it. A page can be missing from the menu and still be reachable, or worse, be a dead link that shows an error page.
• Search the site for leftover template text. Look for the dummy Latin filler paragraphs that builders ship with, plus "Coming soon", "Placeholder", "Your Name Here", a wrong year in the footer, or stock photos with a watermark on them. These are the details that make a serious-looking site look unfinished.

3. Does the contact or signup form actually send?

A form that looks correct and silently throws messages into the void is the most expensive bug on a new website. You will not find out from the page, you have to test the full path.

• Submit a real test entry using an email address you can open. Use your own second inbox if you have one.
• Check the inbox AND the spam folder. New domains frequently land in spam at first.
• Confirm where the notification goes. If it is supposed to hit your WhatsApp, Slack, email, or a spreadsheet, verify it arrives there, and that you can tell which lead is which.
• Confirm the thank-you screen appears after submitting. If the page just sits there or clears the form with no message, visitors assume it failed and leave.
• Confirm the data is stored somewhere you can see it later. A lead you can't find after the fact is a lead you lost.
• Test the failure case. Submit with a badly written email address. Does it warn you, or accept it happily and then lose the enquiry?
• Do at least one submission from a phone. Autofill and mobile keyboards behave differently, and this is where most real enquiries come from.

Repeat this for every form on the site, including newsletter signup and any booking or payment step.

4. Does every page have its own title and description for Google?

Google reads two short pieces of text on each page to decide what to show in search results and in link previews: the page title and the description. Both are set in your website builder's page settings, usually in fields labelled "SEO title" and "meta description". You do not touch code.

• Every page needs its own title, and no two pages should share one. Google's own guide says every page should have a title, with distinct text for each page. "Home" is not a title. "Pilates studio in Pune, book a mat class" is.
• Put the important words at the front. Long titles get cut off, and how much gets cut depends on the device. Make sure the first few words still make sense alone.
• Each page gets a one or two sentence description that says what a visitor gets on that specific page. Write it for a person, not for a keyword list. Google may rewrite it if yours doesn't match the page, so don't waste time stuffing it.
• Check the browser tab and any bookmark preview, if the tab says the wrong thing, Google sees the wrong thing too.
• Paste your link into a WhatsApp chat with yourself. If no title, description, or image preview appears, fix the social preview image in your page settings. This is what people see before they decide to tap.

Do this for your homepage, every service or product page, about, contact, and any pricing page.

5. Is analytics installed and actually recording?

Without this, you'll be guessing about what works. Google Analytics 4 is free and is the usual choice.

• Set it up properly: create an account, create a property for your site, add a web data stream, then put the tracking code on your site. Many builders have a single field for the tracking ID, paste it there and it covers all pages. Google's own setup steps are here: Set up Analytics for a website.
• Verify it, don't assume it. In Analytics, open Reports → Realtime, then load your own site in another tab. You should appear within about 30 seconds. No number? The code isn't firing.
• Check it's on every page, not just the homepage. Open two different pages with Realtime running and confirm both register.
• Mark the action that matters as a key event, signup, form submit, booking. Otherwise Analytics will tell you people visited and never tell you whether any of them did anything.

Be honest with yourself about the limits: analytics undercounts people who block trackers, and small numbers are noisy. Use it to spot direction, not to declare exact truth.

6. Is the site added to Google Search Console?

Search Console is free and tells you how Google actually sees your site: whether it can find your pages, which searches bring people to you, and what's blocking it. If you do one thing from this list today, do this. search.google.com/search-console/about

• Add your site and verify you own it. Verification usually means adding one record to your domain's DNS settings or uploading one file. If your website builder has a one-click Search Console connection, use it.
• Submit your sitemap. This is the file that lists your pages for Google to crawl. To find yours, take your homepage address and add /sitemap.xml to the end. Many builders generate it automatically. Add it under Sitemaps in Search Console. If that address gives a "not found" error, ask your builder how to generate one.
• Check that nothing is blocking Google. Now add /robots.txt instead and open that page. If your whole site is disallowed there, Google can't read it, and pages blocked by robots.txt are unlikely to appear in search results at all.
• Inspect your three most important pages with the URL Inspection tool, type a page's full address into the Search Console bar at the top. It tells you whether Google can index that page, and lets you request indexing so it doesn't have to wait to notice you.
• Look at the Pages report for pages Google chose not to show, and read the reason it gives.

Set expectations honestly: getting indexed takes time, often days to weeks, and Search Console cannot rescue a page that is thin, unrelated to what people search for, or broken. It only reports what Google found.

What to fix first, if you're short on time

• Form doesn't send: stop everything and fix it. This is lost revenue, today.
• Broken or placeholder links: fix next. This is trust.
• Slow on mobile: fix third. This is traffic you paid to attract and then dropped.
• Analytics and Search Console: set up fourth. Nothing is wasted by doing this after launch, you just can't recover the data you didn't collect.
• Titles and descriptions: last, then give Google time to pick them up.

Three quick questions

Do I need to hire someone for this? No. Everything above is clickable and free. Where you might want help is the technical tail of it, DNS records, speed fixes, and making sure tracking is wired correctly.

Is a good PageSpeed score the goal? No. Fast-enough on a real phone is the goal. A high score with a form that doesn't send is still a broken launch.

Can I launch and fix things later? Yes for polish, no for the form and the links. Those are the two things visitors judge you on within seconds.

The honest summary

Nothing here is complicated. The reason most new sites launch with broken buttons and dead forms is that the person who built it was the only visitor it ever had, and they already knew where everything was supposed to go. So test it like a stranger, on a phone you hold in one hand, with an email address you'll actually check.

That's the whole job before you send the link. Then send it.

Baljia is an AI employee that builds and runs this kind of work for business owners through WhatsApp or Slack, including checking, fixing, and wiring up analytics and Search Console. If you'd rather not run this checklist yourself, that's what it's for.

Sources

1. Web Vitals thresholds (LCP 2.5s good, 4s poor), web.dev/articles/vitals and web.dev/articles/optimize-cwv-business
2. PageSpeed Insights measures mobile and desktop performance, developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/v5/about, tool at pagespeed.web.dev
3. Mobile-Friendly Test retired December 2023, developers.google.com/search/blog/2016/05/a-new-mobile-friendly-testing-tool; also searchengineland.com
4. Page titles: give every page a title, descriptive and concise, developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/title-link
5. Meta descriptions and when Google rewrites them, developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/snippet
6. Google Analytics 4 website setup, support.google.com/analytics/answer/14183469
7. Search Console overview, search.google.com/search-console/about
8. Sitemaps: what they are and how to submit, developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/build-sitemap
9. robots.txt blocking and Google Search technical requirements, developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/technical
10. URL Inspection tool and requesting indexing, support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9012289 and developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/ask-google-to-recrawl

Drafted with AI assistance, reviewed by Digvijay.