What this covers
By the end you will have a launch list for any website a partner builds under your agency's name: what to test, what to ask for in writing and what must be true before the client sees the site.
Why the last week matters most
A website built by a partner goes out with your agency's name on it. The client will not know which parts the partner did, and they should not have to. If the inquiry form fails on day one, it is your agency's form that failed.
Most launch problems are not design problems. The pages look right in review. What goes wrong is everything around them: a form that sends to an old inbox, a redirect that was never set, a tracking tag on the staging site but not the live one, a page that was meant to be hidden from Google and is now in the results. None of these shows up in a screenshot. They show up weeks later, when the client asks why inquiries have stopped.
So the useful question before launch is not whether the site looks finished. It is whether the site works, can be measured and can be handed over. The checks below cover all three.
The site works for a visitor
Start with what a real person does. Open the site on a phone, on mobile data rather than office wifi, and use it the way a customer would.
- Every page loads, with no leftover sample text, test images or broken links.
- Each service page says what the service is, who it is for and how to get it, before the visitor has to scroll far.
- The phone number is clickable on a phone and rings the right line.
- Every form sends, and the message arrives in an inbox someone reads, with the visitor's details intact.
- The confirmation after a form tells the visitor what happens next.
- Text is readable without zooming, and buttons are large enough to press.
Do the form test with a real submission on the live domain, not the staging copy. Then ask the client, or the person who reads their inbox, to confirm it arrived. Our article on whether a website inquiry actually arrived sets out that test step by step.
The site works for Google
The second set of checks is about search. A new build that loses the old site's rankings is the most expensive mistake in this list, and it is almost always preventable.
- Redirects. Every old address that had traffic or links should point to the most relevant new page with a permanent redirect. Ask the partner for the redirect list as a document, and test a sample of old addresses yourself.
- Indexing. Staging sites are often set to stay out of Google. Make sure that setting is switched off on the live site, and that pages meant to be private are still kept out.
- Titles and descriptions. Each page needs its own title that says what the page is. Duplicate titles across many pages are a sign that templates were filled in a hurry.
- Sitemap. The live site should have an XML sitemap listing the pages you want found, and it should be submitted in Search Console.
- Internal links. Service pages should be reachable from the navigation and linked from related pages, not left for Google to discover by chance.
If the site is replacing an older one, compare the pages that brought visits in the last few months against the new structure. Each of those pages needs a clear new home. Our website migration work starts from that comparison.
The site can be measured
A site that cannot be measured cannot be reported, and you will be reporting it. Before launch, confirm that:
- Google Analytics is installed on the live domain and recording visits
- form submissions and phone clicks are recorded as key events, so inquiries can be counted
- Search Console is verified for the live domain, with the client as owner and your agency as a user
- any call tracking numbers appear where they should and forward to the right phone
Make one test inquiry and find it in Analytics the next day. If it is not there, the setup is not finished. It is far easier to fix tracking now than to explain to a client in month three why the first two months of inquiries were never counted, and why the report cannot show what the new site has done for them.
The site can be handed over
The last group of checks protects the client and your agency if anything changes later. A partner should be able to give you all of this in writing without being asked twice:
- who holds the domain, the hosting, the website login and every connected account, with the client as owner
- the list of plugins, themes or services the site depends on, and which ones carry a renewal cost
- where backups are kept and how often they run
- the redirect list and any settings changed during launch
- a short note on how to update the main pages without breaking the layout
Ownership deserves a moment of attention. When accounts sit in a partner's name, every future change depends on that partner. The client should own their accounts, your agency should hold access, and the partner should work through that access.
A worked example
Picture a cleaning company moving from an old site with twelve pages to a new site with twenty, built by a partner under your agency's name. The design is approved and the pages are written.
In the final week, the partner sends the redirect list: each of the twelve old addresses mapped to its new page. You test five of them by typing the old address into a browser. Four land correctly; one lands on the home page because the old service was renamed. The partner fixes it the same day.
You submit the contact form on the live site from your phone. It arrives, but in an inbox the client stopped checking last year. The client gives the right address, the form is changed and tested again, and the test inquiry appears in Analytics the following morning.
Nothing in that week was dramatic. Two small problems were found before the client could find them, which is the whole point.
What to check first
If time is short, check these four before anything else: the forms reach a monitored inbox, the redirects from the old site are in place, the live site is open to Google, and inquiries are being recorded. Each one, if missed, costs more to fix after launch than before it.
Everything else on this list matters too, but those four decide whether the client's first month on the new site is a good one. If you want a partner who works through this list as standard on every build, our for agencies page explains how we deliver under your name.