Post-Launch Website Checklist for the First 30 Days

Launch isn’t the end. It’s the start of monitoring. The first week tells you whether the migration held, whether forms still create pipeline, and whether search can find the new URLs. Here’s the checklist.

Verify (Day 1)

Do this before you announce the site. A pretty homepage with a broken quote form is a failed launch.

Redirects

• Map first — Every old URL that had traffic, rankings, or backlinks needs a 301 to the closest new page. Not the homepage by default.
• Test a sample — Hit the top 50 URLs by traffic. Then crawl the rest. Chains (A → B → C) waste equity; point A straight to the final URL.
• Watch 404s — Search Console and server logs will surface what you missed. Fix those in week 1, not month 3.

A full redirect method lives in our redirect strategy for migrations.

Analytics

• Events fire — Form submit, click-to-call, file download, chat start. If the event isn’t in the tag, it didn’t happen.
• Conversions track — The same goals you baselined in discovery. Compare like to like.
• No broken tracking — Staging pixels on production, missing consent, or a new domain that never got the container: all common. Confirm in the live debugger, not the slide deck.

Forms and Critical Paths

• Submit every form — Contact, demo, quote, sample. Confirm the email arrives, the CRM row appears, and the thank-you page loads.
• Internal links — Nav, footer, breadcrumbs, in-body CTAs. No 404s on the paths buyers actually use.
• Mobile — Same forms on a real phone. Thumb-reachable fields. No desktop-only widgets.

Search (Days 1–7)

Sitemap and Indexation

• Sitemap submitted — New URLs only. Old sitemap leftovers confuse crawlers.
• Search Console — URL inspection on homepage, key service pages, and a few migrated URLs. Indexed? Canonical correct?
• Don’t panic on day 2 — Recrawl takes time. Panic if important URLs are still missing after two weeks, or if you see a traffic cliff with rising 404s.

Core Web Vitals

• Still passing? — Field data lags. Use lab + a few real-user checks the first week.
• No regression — A redesign that adds weight is a ranking risk. If LCP slipped past ~2.5s on key templates, that’s a week-1 fix, not a “phase 2” idea.

Monitor

First week

Check daily: traffic vs. the pre-launch baseline, server errors, form volume, and 404 rate. Qualified inbound leads matter more than session count. If traffic dipped 15% but quote requests held, you’re fine. If traffic held and forms went to zero, you’re not.

First month

• Rankings — Expected turbulence on migrated URLs. Watch impressions and position on money terms, not vanity keywords.
• Conversion trends — Visitors → qualified leads. Same definition you set in discovery.
• Pipeline — Ask sales: are these leads real? Title, company, intent. Volume without quality is noise.

Ongoing

Uptime and performance alerts. You shouldn’t learn about downtime from a customer.

Optimization

Baseline

Document week-0 and week-4: organic sessions, form submits, lead-to-opportunity rate, top landing pages, Core Web Vitals. Without this, “the new site isn’t working” is a feeling.

Backlog

• Fix first — Broken paths, missing redirects, tracking gaps.
• Then convert — CTA clarity, form friction, proof near the ask.
• Then grow — Content and SEO. Don’t A/B a headline while the quote form 500s.

Quarterly

Review what’s producing qualified pipeline. Kill pages that attract the wrong traffic. Double down on the ones sales actually uses.

---

We monitor every launch. Start a project and we’ll map your go-live checklist.