5 things to check before your website goes live

We run a version of this checklist before every website we ship. None of it is exotic — that's the point. These are the five things most likely to go wrong in the first week after launch, and they take an afternoon to fix properly.

1. Every form actually sends

Test every form on the live domain, not just in development — contact forms, newsletter signups, booking widgets. A misconfigured API key or a CORS rule that only breaks in production is one of the most common last-mile failures we see.

2. Meta titles and descriptions are set on every page

Not just the homepage. Search engines and social previews both read these per-page, and a missing description means Google writes one for you — usually badly.

3. Mobile is the real test, not a resize

Load the site on an actual phone, on real mobile data, not just a resized browser window. Tap targets, sticky elements and font sizes behave differently than they do in devtools.

4. Analytics and consent are both firing

Confirm the analytics tag actually receives events, and that it respects your cookie consent banner if you have one — a broken consent gate either loses you data or breaks compliance, and both are easy to miss until it's already live.

5. There's a backup before you flip the switch

Whatever platform you're on, take a snapshot right before launch. It's the cheapest insurance you'll ever buy, and the one step people skip when they're in a hurry to ship.