Post Launch Checklist

Pointing Your Domain

Once the new site is built and your content has moved over, it's time to point your domain at its new home. Do this during a low traffic window, so any hiccups affect as few visitors as possible.

Give it a little time after the switch. DNS changes can take a few hours to fully take effect, so some visitors may briefly see the old site while others see the new one.

Can People Find It?

Confirm your SSL certificate is active and the site loads securely. Make sure search engines are allowed to index the new site too. Many platforms have a setting for this, sometimes left switched off from a draft or staging environment, and it's an easy thing to miss. Submit your new sitemap to Google Search Console so it can find and crawl your updated pages, think of it as filing your change of address.

Did Anything Get Left Behind?

Set up any redirects you still need, especially for URLs that changed at the last minute, a redirect is just mail forwarding for your website. Coordinate with whoever manages your paid campaigns so they can update ad destination URLs. Submit every form on the site and confirm the data arrives where it should and any confirmation emails actually send, a form that loads but fails silently is easy to miss. Test your redirects and any pages you kept on another platform, then run a broken link checker across the whole site and fix what it finds.

Is It Actually Working?

Check that your analytics and conversion tracking are collecting data on the new site. Spot check your most important pages on both desktop and mobile.

Is Your Team Ready?

Don't forget the human side of the move. Set up logins for anyone who'll be publishing or making changes, and walk them through the new site. A little orientation now saves a lot of confused messages later.

Once everything checks out, you're live.