Five of these fifteen block launch. The other ten can be fixed next week with the site already live and earning. Knowing which is which is what stops a finished website sitting unlaunched for months — a genuinely common outcome.
Run everything from your own phone, on mobile data. Not the developer’s laptop, not office wifi.
The five that block launch
If any of these fails, don’t go live. If all five pass, go live today.
☐ 1. The phone number is correct and dials when tapped
The only truly unrecoverable defect on this list — an enquiry lost to a wrong number is lost silently.
☐ 2. The contact form reaches an inbox you check
Submit a test enquiry. Confirm which inbox it arrived in. Forms failing silently, or delivering to a developer’s mailbox, is common and invisible from outside.
☐ 3. The WhatsApp button opens a chat with your number, with the country code
Tap it. A missing +91 breaks it for a share of users and is one of the most frequent defects.
☐ 4. Nothing is factually wrong
Prices, services, address, hours, the spelling of your business name. Also check no template demo text or another client’s name survives anywhere.
☐ 5. It’s readable and loads in about three seconds on mobile data
On a cheap Android phone if you have one. Usually a matter of compressed images, not hosting.
The ten that can wait
Fix these next week. None justifies another three weeks offline.
☐ 6. Every menu page opens — no blank pages, no placeholder text
☐ 7. Prices or ranges appear somewhere — the most common reason a visitor leaves without contacting you
☐ 8. Photographs are of your own work, not stock imagery
☐ 9. The address shows https with a padlock
☐ 10. Your full postal address is on the site, not just the city
☐ 11. The map embed points at the right place
☐ 12. Social links go to your accounts and open correctly
☐ 13. Page titles say something useful — your service and city, not “Home | Untitled”
☐ 14. Analytics and Search Console are installed under your own Google account
☐ 15. Your five most-asked questions are answered somewhere on the site
The two technical checks nobody thinks of
Worth asking your developer directly, because both are invisible to you and both are expensive:
☐ Is the staging site blocked from search engines — and has the block been removed from the live site?
Both halves matter. A staging site left visible means two copies of your website compete in search results. A block left on after launch means the finished site cannot be found at all — a quiet and costly failure that can go unnoticed for months.
☐ Are old page addresses redirected, if this replaced an existing site?
A rebuild that changes every URL without redirects loses whatever search visibility you’d accumulated. The most commonly skipped step in a relaunch.
Run this before releasing the final payment
Tie the launch checklist to the money. Keep the final instalment at 10% — small enough that nobody deadlocks over it, large enough to get the list completed.
Before I release the final payment: I’ve tested the form (it reached [inbox]), the WhatsApp button and the phone number from my phone. Could you confirm the staging block is removed from the live site, and send the registrar, hosting and admin logins plus a full backup?
That combines the launch check with the handover, which is where the remaining leverage is. The nine handover items.
The launch bar, and why it exists
If items 1–5 pass, go live. Everything else is an improvement you can make in minutes once the site is working.
The reason to be firm about this: there’s a whole category of websites that were built, paid for, and never launched — sitting at “ninety percent” for months or years while someone kept finding two more things. Each postponement makes the next easier, and eventually the site genuinely is out of date, which becomes the new reason not to launch.
Almost everything on a website can be changed after publishing:
| Worried about | Change it after launch? |
|---|---|
| Photographs | Yes — minutes |
| Any wording | Yes — minutes |
| Colours | Yes |
| Which service appears first | Yes |
| Adding a page | Yes |
| Prices | Yes — and you’ll need to anyway |
Something imperfect and live beats something perfect and invisible.
After launch, in the first week
☐ Search your own business name and check the site appears
☐ Send the link to two customers and ask if anything looks wrong
☐ Put both renewal dates in your calendar with 30-day reminders
☐ Set a quarterly reminder to read your own site on your phone — ten minutes, four times a year, and your site never joins the abandoned category
☐ Start a “next week” list for everything from the ten non-blocking items
What to do this week
- Run items 1–5 from your own phone on mobile data.
- Submit a test enquiry and confirm which inbox received it.
- Ask about the staging search-engine block, both halves.
- Go live if all five pass, and put the rest on a next-week list.
- Tie the final 10% to the handover items, not to your satisfaction.
If you want it done the certain way
We hand over this checklist at go-live with each item tested in front of you, and we’ll tell you plainly when a site is past the launch bar and the rest can wait. Live first, improve next week. WhatsApp us; we reply in about five minutes between 9am and 7pm.
Related reading
- Is your own perfectionism keeping the site offline?
- Website handover checklist: the keys you must get
- “Why am I not on Google?”
- How to check who visited your website
- Who on your side is allowed to say “final”?
FAQ
How do I know if my website is ready to launch?
Five things must be right: a correct tappable phone number, a contact form reaching an inbox you check, a working WhatsApp button with the country code, no factual errors, and readable loading in about three seconds on mobile data. Everything else can be fixed after launch.
What should I test before paying the final instalment?
Submit a test enquiry and confirm which inbox it reached, tap the WhatsApp button and phone number, open every menu page, and ask whether the staging search-engine block has been removed from the live site.
Why isn’t my new website showing on Google?
A common cause is a staging block left in place after launch, which prevents indexing entirely. Ask your developer to confirm the block was removed, and check Search Console.
Can I change things after my website goes live?
Almost everything — photographs, wording, colours, page order, adding pages — in minutes. A website is a page you edit, which is why launching before it’s perfect costs you very little.
