A site can look finished and still fail on launch day. The causes are rarely clever. A certificate was not issued for the www address, a form posts to a test endpoint, a link preview shows the wrong image. This checklist covers the boring problems, in the order we check them.
Domain and hosting
- Both addresses work.
example.comandwww.example.comshould each load the site over HTTPS, or one should redirect to the other. Test both. - HTTPS everywhere. The certificate covers every hostname you use, and plain
http://redirects tohttps://. - A real 404 page. A missing URL should say so and link back home, not show a server error.
- Old URLs redirect. If you are replacing an existing site, map each old address to its new one so search rankings and bookmarks survive.
If your site shows an address such as [email protected], make sure mail to it arrives and mail from it is trusted. Three DNS records do most of the work.
| Record | Purpose |
|---|---|
| SPF | Lists which servers may send mail for your domain |
| DKIM | Adds a signature so receivers can verify a message |
| DMARC | Tells receivers what to do when a message fails those checks |
A starting DMARC record that only monitors, and does not reject anything yet, looks like this.
txt
Name: _dmarc.example.com
Value: v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:[email protected]Once reports show only legitimate mail passing, tighten the policy from p=none to p=quarantine, and later to p=reject.
Search and sharing
- Every page has a unique title and a description of one or two sentences.
- A sitemap is published and listed in
robots.txt. - Each page has a canonical address, so duplicates do not compete.
- Links shared in chat or social media show the right title and image. Paste a few into a messaging app and look.
Accessibility
- Body text meets a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1, in both light and dark themes.
- Everything can be reached and used with the keyboard, and the focused element is clearly visible.
- Images that carry meaning have alternative text, and decorative ones have empty alt text.
- Animation respects the visitor's reduced motion setting.
Performance
- Images are sized for how they are displayed, not uploaded at full camera resolution.
- Fonts are loaded from your own domain or preloaded, with a sensible fallback while they load.
- The page is usable on a mid-range phone on a mobile connection, not just a laptop on office wifi.
Last, before you announce
- Submit every form once and confirm the message arrives.
- Click every link in the navigation and footer.
- Check that analytics, if you use them, record a visit and respect consent rules.
- Keep the previous version available for a rollback.
None of these steps is difficult. Skipping them is what makes launch day stressful.