How to review a website before launch
An organised pre-launch review helps you find issues that could affect navigation, forms, mobile use and SEO.
Launching a website should not be the first time you check whether everything works. A final review helps you spot content errors, broken links, mobile issues and missing elements on important pages.
The checklist should fit the project, but the order of the checks can stay simple and consistent.
Review the main pages and information
Go through the important pages as a first-time visitor. The message, services, contact details and next steps should be easy to understand.
- correct titles and headings
- no leftover template content
- up-to-date contact details
- useful image alternative text
- correct prices or conditions
Complete the forms
Submit contact forms on desktop and mobile. Confirm that the message reaches the right address, the visitor receives a clear response and error messages explain what needs to be fixed.
If the website has different forms, test each version and check required-field validation.
Review the mobile experience
Test the pages on a real phone, not only by resizing a browser window. Check the menu, text size, spacing between buttons, images and elements that might overflow the screen.
Also check the speed of the main pages. Optimised images, scripts loaded only when needed and a stable layout improve the experience without changing the content.
Check the basic SEO elements
Before launch, review the title, description, URL, canonical and structured data where needed. Important pages should be accessible and indexable correctly.
Do not add markup or promises that do not match the visible content. Accuracy matters more than the number of SEO elements.
Run one final check after publishing
After launch, review the website again on the public domain. Caching, server configuration and external resources can behave differently from the local environment.
Record what you checked and keep a short list for future updates. This lets you control each change without starting the whole process from zero.
This article was prepared with the assistance of AI tools and editorially reviewed before publication.
