Before launch
- List every page on the old site, plus any address that Google or other sites still send people to. Each one needs a home on the new site or a redirect.
- Write the redirect map: old address, new address, permanent (301) redirect.
- Check every page title and description is unique and says what the page is about.
- Test every form on the staging site, and check where the emails go and that replying reaches the visitor.
- Check the site on a real phone, on mobile data, not just on a desktop with the window narrowed.
- Proofread contact details: phone number, address, opening hours, email. These are the details most often copied wrong.
- Make sure staging is hidden from search engines, and that the live site is not.
On launch day
- Do not touch email. Changing where a website is hosted should not change where email is delivered. Check the mail records before and after.
- Switch over and test the redirects, a sample of old addresses at least, ideally all of them.
- Check the padlock (SSL) works on both the www and non-www versions, and that one redirects to the other.
- Send a real test enquiry through the live form.
- Submit the sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
In the weeks after
- Watch Search Console for pages Google cannot find and fix them with redirects.
- Update your Google Business Profile and any directory listings with the new page addresses if they changed.
- Ask a few customers to try the site and tell you anything that confused them.
- Keep the old site's backup for a while, just in case.
Most of the damage from a bad launch is invisible for weeks: rankings slip and enquiries thin out, and nobody connects it to the new site. A checklist like this is cheap insurance. It is also how we run our own redesigns.