Checklist · IT
Pre-Launch Website Checklist
Forty-two checks across performance, SEO, accessibility, analytics and security to run before any corporate site goes live.
Performance
Core Web Vitals decide both ranking and conversion. Test on a throttled mobile connection, not on office wifi.
- Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds
- Cumulative Layout Shift below 0.1
- Images served as WebP or AVIF with explicit dimensions
- Fonts preloaded with a fallback that avoids layout shift
SEO
Metadata and structure must be right at launch. Retrofitting after indexing costs months of ranking recovery.
- Unique title under 60 characters on every page
- Meta description under 160 characters
- One H1 per page with a logical heading hierarchy
- XML sitemap, robots.txt and canonical tags in place
- Organisation and LocalBusiness structured data
Accessibility
Accessibility is a legal expectation for enterprise buyers and a usability win for everyone.
- Alt text on every meaningful image
- Contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for body text
- Full keyboard navigation with visible focus states
- Form fields with associated labels and error messages
Analytics and security
Launching without measurement means the first month of data is lost permanently.
- Analytics with conversion goals configured
- Search Console and Bing Webmaster verified
- HTTPS enforced with HSTS enabled
- Form spam protection and rate limiting active
- Automated daily backups with a tested restore
FAQs
Questions this guide gets asked.
How long should a launch audit take?
Half a day for a small site, two days for a platform with many templates and integrations.
What Lighthouse score should we target?
90+ on mobile performance and 95+ on accessibility, SEO and best practices.
Do we need structured data?
Yes. It is the cheapest way to improve how your listing appears in search results.
More resources
Related guides and checklists.
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