The website launch checklist: domains, DNS, SSL, tracking and speed

A new website is months of design, content and development, and most of the risk is concentrated in a few hours on launch day. Rankings can drop because redirects were missed. Leads can disappear because a form points at a test inbox. Company email can stop working because someone replaced the DNS zone.

This is the technical checklist we use to launch marketing websites. It won't write your content or choose your colours, but it will stop the problems that show up the morning after.

How to use it: copy it into your project tool, assign an owner to each line and tick them off. Items marked ★ are the ones we see missed most often.

1. Two weeks before launch: plan

• Launch date and time agreed. Pick a quiet period, not a Friday afternoon and not the day a campaign goes out.
• Owner for each area. DNS, content, tracking, forms, sign-off.
• ★ URL inventory of the old site. Export every indexable URL (crawl the site, and pull top pages from analytics and Search Console).
• ★ Redirect map. Every old URL mapped to the most relevant new URL. Not everything to the home page.
• Access confirmed to the domain registrar, DNS provider, hosting, analytics, tag manager, Search Console and CRM.
• Rollback plan. What you'll do, and who decides, if something goes seriously wrong.

2. Content and SEO

• Every page has a unique title tag (roughly 60 characters or fewer) and meta description (roughly 155 or fewer).
• One H1 per page, with a logical H2/H3 structure.
• Images have descriptive alt text and are compressed (WebP or AVIF where possible).
• Canonical tags point to the preferred version of each page.
• Structured data (Organization, Breadcrumbs, FAQ, Articles, Products) added where relevant and validated.
• ★ "noindex" removed. Staging sites are usually blocked from search engines. Make sure that setting doesn't come with you.
• ★ robots.txt allows crawling of the live site and points to the sitemap.
• XML sitemap generated, containing only live, indexable URLs.
• Custom 404 page that helps people find what they wanted.
• Internal links updated to new URLs, so they don't rely on redirects.

3. Domains and DNS

• ★ Full DNS inventory. Export every record on the current zone: A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, verification records), CAA.
• ★ Email records untouched. MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC must carry over exactly, or company email and campaign sending will fail.
• Lower the TTL on records you'll change (for example to 300 seconds) 24–48 hours before launch, so the switch spreads quickly.
• www and non-www decided. One redirects to the other with a 301.
• Domain renewal date checked, auto-renew on, registrar lock enabled, 2FA on the registrar account.

4. SSL and security

• SSL certificate issued for every hostname you use (apex, www and any subdomains).
• HTTP redirects to HTTPS with a single 301 (no redirect chains).
• No mixed content. Every image, script and font loads over HTTPS.
• HSTS enabled once HTTPS works everywhere. Start with a short max-age.
• Admin accounts are named, use strong passwords and 2FA. Remove test and developer accounts that aren't needed.
• Staging site protected by password or IP restriction, and not indexable.
• Backup taken immediately before launch, with a tested restore.

5. Tracking, forms and consent

• ★ Every form tested end to end on the live domain: submission, confirmation message, email notification, CRM record and correct owner.
• Forms send to production inboxes and CRM pipelines, not test ones.
• Analytics and tag manager installed on every page, with the correct IDs for production.
• Conversion events (form submissions, bookings, purchases) fire once per conversion and are marked as conversions.
• Ad platform tags and conversion tracking updated for the new site.
• Cookie consent works: nothing non-essential loads before consent, and the choice is respected.
• UTM and click ID capture passes source data into your forms (see our guide to connecting your CRM, website and ad platforms).
• Internal traffic filtered from analytics.

6. Speed and experience

Google's Core Web Vitals give you clear targets. For a "good" rating, aim for:

Metric	What it measures	Good
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)	How fast the main content appears	2.5 seconds or less
INP (Interaction to Next Paint)	How quickly the page responds to taps and clicks	200 milliseconds or less
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)	How much the layout jumps while loading	0.1 or less

• Key templates (home, service, landing, article) tested with PageSpeed Insights on mobile.
• Images sized correctly, lazy-loaded below the fold, with width and height set.
• Caching and CDN configured.
• Fonts limited to what you use, with font-display: swap.
• Third-party scripts reviewed. Each chat widget, heatmap and pixel costs speed.
• Tested on real devices: at least one iPhone, one Android, and Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge on desktop.
• Accessibility basics: keyboard navigation, visible focus, colour contrast, form labels.

7. Launch day

• Final backup of the old site.
• Deploy the new site to production.
• Update DNS records (only the ones that need changing).
• Check the site resolves on the live domain, with a valid certificate, from more than one network.
• ★ Test redirects: run the old URL list through a redirect checker and confirm each returns a single 301 to the right page.
• Re-test every form on the live domain.
• Confirm analytics is receiving real-time data.
• Submit the XML sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
• Send a test email from each marketing tool and check SPF, DKIM and DMARC still pass.

8. The first two weeks

• Crawl the live site for broken links, missing titles and redirect chains.
• Watch Search Console for spikes in 404s, indexing issues or drops in impressions.
• Compare leads per day against the old site's baseline.
• Uptime and SSL monitoring switched on, with alerts to a real person.
• Raise the DNS TTL back to normal once everything is stable.
• Write the handover document: where everything is, who has access and how to make common changes.