The build is complete. The design looks polished, the copy matches your brand voice, and the pages look great on your monitor. You are ready to click publish and show the site to the world.
But before you go live, you need to perform a final inspection. A website has many moving parts, and launching with broken links, missing forms, or slow pages can cost you clients and search rankings right at the start.
Here is a 10-point launch checklist every business website should pass before the DNS cutover.
1. The Mobile Check
Over 60% of local search traffic happens on mobile devices. Open your website preview on a physical phone, not just in your desktop browser.
- Are the buttons large enough to tap easily with a thumb?
- Does the font size stay readable without zooming in?
- Do images wrap or overlap with text on narrow screens?
2. Form Testing (The lead checks)
Test every form on your website. Fill out a dummy request and click submit.
- Does the confirmation screen appear as expected?
- Does the lead notification arrive in your email inbox within two minutes?
- Is the data formatted clearly so you can act on it?
If your contact form is broken, you are spending money to acquire traffic that has no way to reach you.
3. The 3-Second Speed Test
Run your site preview through a speed analyzer like Google PageSpeed Insights.
- Does the page load in under 2.5 seconds on a mobile connection?
- Is your main image compressed, or is it a heavy 5MB camera file?
- Does the page jump around as elements load? (Layout Shift).
If the page takes longer than three seconds to load, expect to lose 30% of your visitors before they ever see your headline.
4. Title Tags & Meta Descriptions
Title tags and meta descriptions are what show up in Google search results. Open your site settings and verify:
- Do you have a custom title tag for every page? (e.g., "Pricing | Vira-AI" rather than just "Pricing").
- Is your meta description under 155 characters and written to encourage clicks?
- Are you using keywords naturally instead of stuffing them in list format?
5. Broken Link Scan
Click every single link on your site, including the menu items, footer links, privacy policy, and social icons.
- Do they all point to the correct destination?
- Do external links open in a new tab so visitors don't leave your site permanently?
- Do you get any 404 error pages?
6. Alt Text on Images
Alt text is read aloud by screen readers and indexed by Google's image search.
- Does every image have descriptive alt text?
- Are you avoiding filename leaks like
"logo-final-v2-draft.png"?
7. Legal Compliance Pages
To comply with local privacy regulations (like GDPR, CCPA, and regional policies), your website must have two key documents:
- Privacy Policy: Explaining what data you collect (like contact forms or analytics) and how you use it.
- Terms of Service: Setting the rules for using your site.
Place links to these documents in your footer where they are accessible from every page.
8. Analytics & Tracking
Ensure your tracking code (like Google Analytics 4) is wired in correctly. Land on your site preview and check the real-time dashboard to verify your session is recorded.
9. Sitemap & Robots.txt
Verify your site generates a clean XML sitemap (at https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml) listing all active URLs. Check that your robots.txt welcomes search engine crawlers.
10. Backup & Recovery
If your site is hacked or a server goes down, how do you restore it? Verify you have a clean backup of the site files stored in a separate, secure location.
Passed by Default
If you build with Vira-AI, our pre-launch QA process checks all 10 checkpoints for you. Every site we ship passes Core Web Vitals, includes alt text, is accessible by default, and has dynamic XML sitemaps ready for Google.
Read our verification checklist detail to see how we launch sites in seven days, or explore our pricing.