The site looks finished. The designer is happy, you've clicked through it on your laptop, and you want to post the announcement tonight.
This is the riskiest moment in any web project. The problems left now are small and quiet: a contact form that emails nobody, a "hide from Google" setting left on from testing, a WhatsApp button missing the country code. None of them crash the site. They just lose you customers for weeks before anyone notices.
Below are 30 checks, grouped by area. Most take a few minutes. Run them on the real domain, on your own phone, and ideally with a second person who hasn't seen the site before. Fresh eyes find things you've stopped seeing.
Content and pages
- No placeholder text anywhere. Search every page for lorem ipsum, "coming soon", sample prices and dummy phone numbers like 0100 000 0000.
- Contact details are correct and consistent. Phone, WhatsApp, address and opening hours should match your Google Business Profile exactly.
- Someone who didn't write the copy has proofread it. Pay extra attention to prices, names, and the spelling of your own brand in both languages.
- A helpful 404 page exists. Type a wrong address on purpose. The page that appears should lead back to your main sections, not a blank server error.
Mobile, design and language
- Tested on a real mid-range Android phone. Most of your visitors in Egypt and the Gulf arrive on a phone, and resizing a desktop browser doesn't show you what they see.
- Everything is easy to tap. Buttons are big enough for a thumb, nothing overlaps, and no text runs off the screen.
- Arabic pages are fully right-to-left. The layout is mirrored, arrows point the right way, and numbers and punctuation sit where an Arabic reader expects them. Our guide to building an Arabic and English site properly covers the details.
- The language switch keeps you on the same page. Switching on the English "Services" page should open the Arabic services page, not the homepage.
Forms, WhatsApp and payments
- Every form submitted and every message received. Check that each one arrives at the right inbox and not in spam. Then reply to one, to confirm the reply-to address works.
- Email authentication is set up. SPF, DKIM and DMARC records on your domain help your site's emails land in inboxes rather than spam folders.
- WhatsApp links use the international format. The link should look like
wa.me/2010XXXXXXXX: country code first, no plus sign, no leading zero. Tap it on a phone to be sure it opens the right chat. - Payments run on live keys, not test keys. Make one small real payment, confirm the order updates correctly, then refund it.
Speed
- Images are compressed and correctly sized. A 4 MB photo from a phone camera has no place on a homepage. Modern formats like WebP help a lot.
- PageSpeed Insights checked on mobile. Compare the results against Google's Core Web Vitals thresholds in the table below.
- Caching and compression are on. Your developer or host can enable server compression and browser caching in minutes.
- Tested on mobile data, not office fibre. Load the site on 4G somewhere with average signal. That's closer to what customers experience.
| Metric | Measures | Good |
|---|---|---|
| LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) | How fast the main content appears | 2.5 seconds or less |
| INP (Interaction to Next Paint) | How quickly the page responds to taps and clicks | 200 ms or less |
| CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) | How much the page jumps around while loading | 0.1 or less |
A brand-new site usually won't have real-user data in PageSpeed Insights yet, because that needs enough visits. Use the lab results until then. Our guide to website speed and Core Web Vitals explains each metric in plain language.
SEO and Google
- The site is no longer hidden from search engines. Staging sites are often set to noindex, or blocked in robots.txt. Remove both on launch day. It's an easy one to miss, and one of the most damaging.
- Every page has its own title and meta description. Ten pages all titled "Home" is a missed opportunity in search results.
- An XML sitemap is submitted to Google Search Console. It helps Google find your pages sooner.
- Old addresses redirect to new ones. If you're replacing an older site, set up 301 redirects from the old URLs so you keep existing Google rankings and bookmarks.
- Link previews and Maps are updated. Open Graph tags make links shared on WhatsApp and Facebook show a proper image and title. And update the website link on your Google Business Profile. See our guide to showing up on Google Maps.
Security, backups and access
- HTTPS works everywhere. Plain http addresses redirect to https, and the SSL certificate is set to renew automatically.
- Test accounts are removed and passwords are strong. Delete any "admin/admin" or demo users from testing, and turn on two-factor login wherever it's offered.
- Automatic backups are running, and one restore has been tested. A backup you've never restored is a hope, not a backup.
- Debug mode is off. Visitors should never see raw PHP errors or file paths if something goes wrong.
- The domain, hosting and admin accounts are in your name. You have the logins, stored somewhere safe.
Analytics and legal pages
- Analytics is installed and verified. Open the site on your phone and confirm the visit appears in the real-time report.
- Key actions are tracked as events. Form submissions, WhatsApp clicks and purchases are what tell you whether the site is working.
- A privacy policy is published. If your forms collect names and phone numbers, you need one. Stores and course platforms also need clear terms and a refund policy. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE all have data protection laws, so have a lawyer review the wording.
- Uptime monitoring is on. A simple monitor that alerts your phone or email when the site goes down means you hear about it before your customers do.
That's 30.
Launch-day mistakes that cost the most
The checklist covers the site. These mistakes are about timing and setup:
- Launching at the end of the week. If something breaks on your weekend, it may wait days for a fix. Launch early in the working week, when your developer is at their desk.
- Starting ads the same hour. Give the site a day or two of real traffic first. Paying to send people to a broken form is the most expensive way to find a bug.
- Expecting everyone to see the new site instantly. DNS changes can take hours to reach every network. Lowering the DNS TTL a day before the switch shortens the wait.
- Forgetting about email. It's the least visible breakage of all, so it gets its own warning below.
Questions people ask
How long before launch should I start this checklist?
Start about a week before, on the staging version. Leave the domain, SEO and email items for launch day itself, since they depend on the final setup.
Can I launch now and fix the small things later?
Some things, yes: a typo or a slightly slow image. But never launch with broken forms, test payment keys, or the site hidden from Google. Those cost you real customers from the first hour.
Why doesn't my new site show up on Google yet?
New sites take time to be discovered and indexed. Submitting your sitemap in Search Console helps, and so does making sure the noindex setting from staging is really gone.
Who is responsible for this checklist, me or the developer?
Both. The developer should handle the technical items. Only you can confirm that prices, phone numbers and opening hours are right, and only you know which inbox should receive each form.
Do I need a privacy policy for a simple company site?
If any form collects names, emails or phone numbers, yes. It tells visitors what you do with their data, and it's part of meeting data protection rules.
After launch: the first week and beyond
Keep an eye on things for the first seven days: check form submissions daily, look at Search Console for errors, and ask a few customers to try the site and tell you honestly what confused them.
After that, the job becomes maintenance: backups, updates, renewals and regular testing. Our guide to monthly website maintenance explains what that involves. If you're planning a site and want these checks built into the project from the start, book a meeting.
