The launch checklist: what to check before a new website or campaign goes live

Website launches fail quietly. The site looks right, the owner's pleased, the designer moves on, and for weeks nobody notices that Google has been told to stay away, the contact form sends enquiries nowhere, or old bookmarked pages lead to an error. We know, because the first of those happened to us. So check four things, before launch and again after it: that search engines can get in, that every form reaches you, that you can measure enquiries, and that everything points at the new site.

None of these checks is difficult. They get skipped because a site that looks finished feels finished. Here they are in the order we'd run them, with a printable version to tick off.

Our own launch mistake

For at least twelve days in September 2026, Google was told not to crawl oxocreatives.com at all.

The new site's own robots.txt, the small file that tells crawlers where they may go, was fine: it has allowed everything since the day it was written. But until the domain was moved across to the new site on 23 September, the address was still being answered by the old platform the business had used before, and that platform's robots.txt ended with two lines that close a site to every crawler:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Google's robots.txt report in Search Console shows it: a fetch of that old file on 11 September, with the block in force until our own file was first fetched on 23 September at 16:10. The site looked perfectly normal to anyone who visited it. Only a crawler would have noticed, and only if somebody had thought to ask one.

Since then, every build of this site fails if its robots.txt would shut Google or Bing out, and our regular checks read the live file the way a crawler does. The lesson for everyone else is simpler: check what search engines are being told at your real address, before the switch and after it, rather than what your new site says it's going to tell them.

1. Can search engines get in?

• Open yourdomain/robots.txt on the live address. If it contains Disallow: / under User-agent: *, crawlers are being told to stay out of the whole site.
  What good looks like

  The live robots.txt has no "Disallow: /" under "User-agent: *", and nothing else blocks pages you want found.

  Takes two minutes. Covered in Why is my website not showing up on Google or Bing? A step-by-step diagnosis.

• Check for a leftover noindex. Sites are often built with a noindex tag so that the unfinished version stays out of search. Google says that when it finds the tag, it "will drop that page entirely from Google Search results" (Google, block indexing with noindex). Make sure it came off at launch.
  What good looks like

  URL Inspection in Search Console shows your homepage and main pages as indexable, and your website builder's "hide from search" setting is off.

  Takes ten minutes. Covered in Why is my website not showing up on Google or Bing? A step-by-step diagnosis.

• Redirect every old address to its new one. If page addresses have changed, Google recommends permanent redirects, which send anyone visiting an old address straight to its new one, and advises against chains of them. A page that used to bring in enquiries shouldn't become an error page.
  What good looks like

  Every old page address redirects permanently, in one step, to its new page, checked against a list of the old addresses.

  Takes an hour or more, depending on the size of the old site. Covered in Why is my website not showing up on Google or Bing? A step-by-step diagnosis.

• One address for the whole site. The site should load at one version of the address (with or without www, always https), with the others redirecting to it.
  What good looks like

  Typing the address with and without www, and with http, all end up on the same https address.

  Takes five minutes to test. Covered in full above.

• Submit the sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and verify the site in both if it is not already.
  What good looks like

  Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools both show the site as verified and the new sitemap as submitted and read without errors.

  Takes twenty minutes. Covered in Get your business on Bing.

2. Does it work for a real customer?

• Send a real enquiry through every form, from a phone, and check it arrives, including in the spam folder. A form that looks successful but emails nobody is the most expensive fault on this list.
  What good looks like

  You sent a test from every form, on a phone, and each one arrived where it should, with nothing stuck in a spam folder.

  Takes fifteen minutes. Covered in full above.

• Tap every phone number and email address on a phone. They should open the dialler and the email app.
  What good looks like

  On a phone, every phone number opens the dialler and every email address opens the email app.

  Takes five minutes. Covered in full above.

• Go through the site on a phone, not just a laptop, including the menu, the forms and any booking system.
  What good looks like

  You have used the menu, the forms and any booking system on a phone, and everything worked without zooming or hunting.

  Takes twenty minutes. Covered in Nine homepage mistakes.

• Try a page that does not exist. It should show a helpful not-found page with a way back, not a blank screen.
  What good looks like

  A made-up address on the site shows a helpful not-found page with a way back, not a blank screen or an error.

  Takes two minutes. Covered in full above.

• Click every link in the main menu and footer. Links copied from the old site often point at pages that no longer exist.
  What good looks like

  Every menu and footer link goes to a live page on the new site.

  Takes fifteen minutes. Covered in full above.

3. Can you tell whether it's working?

• Analytics records enquiries, not just visits. Set up and test at least one key event for your enquiry form; our guide to GA4 key events walks through it.
  What good looks like

  A test enquiry you sent shows up as a key event in analytics within a day.

  Takes twenty minutes, then a day's wait. Covered in GA4 tells you nothing useful? Set up key events, step by step.

• The cookie banner does what it says. Nothing that needs consent should run before a visitor agrees; we cover the rules in our piece on cookie banners for analytics.
  What good looks like

  Before you accept anything on the banner, no tag that needs consent loads; after you accept, the ones you agreed to do.

  Takes twenty minutes, with the browser's developer tools. Covered in Do you need a cookie banner?.

• You know your starting numbers. Note last month's enquiries and where they came from, so you can tell in three months whether the new site made a difference.
  What good looks like

  You have written down last month's enquiries and where they came from, dated, before the new site went live.

  Takes twenty minutes. Covered in The only five GA4 reports you need.

4. Does everything point at the new site?

• Your Google Business Profile has the right website address, and your other listings match; see our Google Business Profile guide.
  What good looks like

  Your Business Profile links to the new site's address, and your other listings point to the same place.

  Takes fifteen minutes. Covered in Google Business Profile: how to set one up properly, in the right order.

• Social profiles, email signatures, directories and any ads point to live pages, not old addresses.
  What good looks like

  Every social profile, email signature, directory listing and ad points to a live page on the new site.

  Takes an hour. Covered in full above.

• Printed material and signage with a web address still leads somewhere sensible.
  What good looks like

  Any web address on printed material, vans or signs still leads to a sensible live page, with a redirect where the old path has gone.

  Takes twenty minutes. Covered in full above.

5. The legal basics

• A privacy notice that describes what the site actually collects, including through its forms and analytics.
  What good looks like

  The privacy notice describes what the site actually collects, through its forms and analytics, and is linked from every page.

  Takes an hour. Covered in Do you need a cookie banner?.

• Company details, if you are a limited company. GOV.UK says that on "business letters, order forms and websites, you must show" the company's registered number, its registered office address, where it is registered, and that it is a limited company (GOV.UK, running a limited company).
  What good looks like

  The site shows the registered number, the registered office address, where the company is registered and that it is a limited company.

  Takes ten minutes. Covered in full above.

6. If it's a campaign, not a site

• The landing page is live, fast and says what the ad promised.
  What good looks like

  The campaign's landing page loads quickly on a phone, and its headline repeats what the ad promises.

  Takes twenty minutes. Covered in Landing pages that convert: the structure, section by section.

• Conversion tracking is tested with a real enquiry before any money is spent.
  What good looks like

  A test enquiry appeared once as a conversion in the ad account before any money was spent.

  Takes fifteen minutes, then a day's wait. Covered in GA4 tells you nothing useful? Set up key events, step by step.

• Daily budgets and end dates are set, and someone will look at the account in the first few days.
  What good looks like

  Every campaign has a daily budget that fits the monthly figure, an end date where one applies, and a named person to check it in the first few days.

  Takes fifteen minutes. Covered in What Google Ads cost in the UK.

• Someone is ready to answer. A campaign that brings enquiries nobody replies to in time is worse than no campaign. If it is Google Ads, our ads audit checklist covers the account itself.
  What good looks like

  A named person will answer enquiries from the campaign within hours, and knows it is starting.

  Takes a conversation. Covered in full above.

7. After launch

• Day one: check the live robots.txt again, send another test enquiry, and look at Realtime in analytics.
  What good looks like

  On launch day, you have checked the live robots.txt again, sent another test enquiry and seen visits appear in Realtime.

  Takes fifteen minutes. Covered in full above.

• Week one: in Search Console, open the robots.txt report and the page indexing report. Google's robots.txt report lets you see previously fetched versions from the last 30 days, which is how we found our own problem (Google, robots.txt report).
  What good looks like

  In the first week, you have opened the robots.txt report and the page indexing report in Search Console and dealt with anything they show.

  Takes half an hour. Covered in Why is my website not showing up on Google or Bing? A step-by-step diagnosis.

• Month one: compare enquiries with your starting numbers, and look for pages that bring visitors but no enquiries. If pages are still missing from Google, our guide to why a website is not showing up goes through the causes.
  What good looks like

  After a month, you have compared enquiries with your starting numbers and listed pages that bring visitors but no enquiries.

  Takes an hour. Covered in The only five GA4 reports you need.

What we can't tell you

• How often launches go wrong. We know of no reliable data on how many launches by smaller businesses break search visibility, forms or tracking. What we can offer is one real example, our own, and the checks that would have caught it.
• What twelve days cost us. We can't measure what the block cost in visibility or enquiries, because nothing about the old site was being measured by the same tools.
• The order. It's our judgement of what does the most damage if missed, not a ranking from any study.

If you're still at the commissioning stage, it pays to know how to choose a web designer and what a website costs before any work starts.

If you'd like us to build it, our websites service starts with a landing page sprint at a fixed £3,500, and full sites run from £3,500 to £15,000.