the marketing website checklist: what to get right before launch.

A marketing website that is ready to launch has a page for each thing buyers search for, clean urls, unique titles and descriptions, fast pages, forms that work, tracking that records where each lead came from, real copy and accounts you own. Most of this is cheap to do while the site is being built and expensive to fix afterwards. This is the day-one list, in the order you should work through it.

before design

Decisions made here shape everything else.

• A page map. List one page per buying intent before anyone writes a word. If two pages answer the same search, they compete with each other.
• Who the site is for. A site written for everyone convinces no one. Name the buyer.
• One action per page. Each page asks for a single next step: book a call, start a trial, send a message. Pages with five asks get none.

structure and urls

• Clean, lowercase, stable urls. Changing a url later means redirects and lost momentum, so choose it once.
• One host and https. Pick the www or non-www version, redirect the other, and serve everything over https.
• A sensible hierarchy and navigation. A visitor should reach any page in a few clicks, and the menu should match how buyers think, not how you are organised.
• Breadcrumbs. They help visitors place themselves and give search engines the structure.
• A real 404 page. A missing page should say so, return a proper not-found status and point somewhere useful.

search basics built in

• A unique, hand-written title and description for every page. These are what people read in results. Templates produce duplicates.
• One h1 per page. It states what the page is about.
• Canonical tags. They tell search engines which url is the real one when several could show the same page.
• An xml sitemap generated from the real page list. A hand-kept sitemap drifts out of date.
• A robots.txt file. It should allow crawling of what you want found and nothing more.
• Structured data. Describe the organisation and the page trail. Mark up FAQs only where the questions are visible on the page.
• An indexing switch. Staging and preview copies must never be indexable, and production is opened deliberately at launch.

On our own sites, the build refuses to publish while any placeholder text remains, and indexing is one switch that controls robots.txt, the noindex tag and the noindex header together, so a staging build can never be indexed by accident.

speed

• Fast on a mid-range phone. Test on one, on a normal connection, not on your office machine.
• Images sized and in modern formats. An oversized hero image is the most common cause of a slow page.
• Minimal third-party scripts. Each one adds weight and a point of failure. Keep only those you will use.
• Fonts self-hosted or optimised. Load only the weights you use.
• No layout shift. Reserve space for images and embeds so the page does not jump while loading.
• Measured against Core Web Vitals. Check the numbers before launch and again after.

forms and tracking

• Forms tested end to end. Submit one, confirm it arrives where it should, and confirm the sender gets a confirmation.
• Spam protection that does not punish real people. Prefer checks that run quietly in the background over puzzles.
• Source tracking. Capture where each lead came from, using campaign tags in links and hidden form fields. Without it you cannot tell which work pays.
• Analytics and Search Console. Set both up under the business’s own accounts, not the builder’s.
• Tracked calls, if phone matters. If buyers ring you, count those calls too.

content

• Real copy before launch. No dummy text and no placeholder copy. A page that goes live with filler is worse than no page.
• Proof that is true and checkable. Use real results, real names with permission and claims a buyer could verify. Leave out anything you cannot back up.
• Clear contact details. Say how to reach you on every page that asks for action.

ownership and handover

• Everything in the business’s name. Domain, hosting, CMS and analytics all belong to you. Our guide on who owns the accounts when an agency leaves lists what to check.
• Source in a repository you own. If the code lives only on the builder’s machine, you do not own the site.
• Deployment documented. Someone new should be able to publish a change by following the notes.

launch day

1. Switch indexing on.
2. Submit the sitemap in Search Console.
3. Check redirects from any old site, page by page.
4. Test every form in production, not only on staging.
5. Open the live site on a phone and use it.
6. Set up uptime monitoring and backups.

After that, be patient. Our note on how long SEO takes explains what to expect and when.

how we build it

Our marketing sites are built for search from the first commit: clean structure, fast pages and a CMS your team can use. A project typically takes 3 to 6 weeks and starts with paid discovery of 1 to 2 weeks. We work in two-week increments on a staging site at a fixed price per stage, and scope changes are priced before they are built. Everything ships to a repository you own, and at handover you receive the source, credentials, deployment documentation and a recorded walkthrough.

If you want a site that passes this list from day one, see our web development service.