Website launch checklist for marketing teams
A website launch decides whether the traffic, rankings, and lead flow the old site built carry over to the new one. Get the cutover wrong and you spend the following weeks rebuilding rankings that disappeared with the old URLs and explaining why no leads arrived while a form was broken.
This website launch checklist covers the work between a content-complete build on staging and a live site you can trust, for marketing teams running the launch with a development partner or agency. It starts at final staging checks and ends with the site live, redirects verified, and tracking confirmed on production.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a website launch take from staging to live?
Plan one to two weeks for the pre-launch checks and a single day for the cutover itself. The redirect map and end-to-end form testing take the longest, so start those first. Teams that compress the checks into the final 48 hours tend to launch with broken tracking or missed redirects.
Who should own the website launch checklist?
One named person on the marketing team, even when an agency builds the site. The agency runs the technical cutover, but the checklist owner verifies each item and makes the go decision. Split ownership shows up after launch as steps each side assumed the other had done, usually redirects or tracking.
Does the redirect map need to cover every old URL?
Cover every URL Google has indexed, including old blog posts and retired landing pages. Those pages carry backlinks and rankings that die with a 404. Export the full list from Google Search Console, map each URL to its closest new equivalent, and send pages with no equivalent to the nearest relevant hub page.
What should you do if traffic drops after the launch?
Check the redirects and the staging noindex tag first; those two cause most of the drops that need fixing. Some movement is normal for two to four weeks while Google recrawls the site. If Search Console shows old URLs returning 404s or key pages excluded from the index, fix that before considering a rollback.
Do you need dedicated software to run a website launch checklist?
A spreadsheet handles a single launch run by two or three people. The steps span marketing, a development partner, and stakeholders, so items stall when nobody can see what's left. Teams that coordinate in Slack often run the checklist there; Chaser turns a list like this into a shared Slack checklist with an owner on each step.
