Launching a website feels like the finish line, but most of the mistakes that cost businesses traffic and leads happen in the last week before launch — not during design or development. Here’s what to check before you flip the switch.
Technical basics
1. Test on a real phone, not just your laptop. Most visitors to a Pune small-business website will land on it from a phone, often on a mid-range Android device on a 4G connection. Open the site on an actual phone, not just your browser’s mobile preview, and check that buttons are easy to tap and text doesn’t need zooming.
2. Check your page load speed. Run your homepage through Google’s PageSpeed Insights before launch, not after. A slow first impression loses visitors before they read a word.
3. Make sure HTTPS is working everywhere. Every page should load with the padlock icon, no “not secure” warnings, and no mixed content errors. If any page still loads over plain HTTP, browsers will flag it.
4. Test every form. Contact forms, quote request forms, newsletter signups — submit each one yourself and confirm you actually receive the email or see the lead land in your CRM. A broken form is invisible to you but costs you every single enquiry.
5. Check all your links. Broken links frustrate visitors and hurt your SEO. Click through every page, every button, every link in the footer and navigation menu before launch.
6. Set up proper 404 and error pages. If someone mistypes a URL or clicks an old bookmark, they should land on a page that helps them find what they need, not a blank error screen.
Content and SEO basics
7. Write unique titles and meta descriptions for every page. Each page needs its own page title and meta description, not a copy-pasted version of the homepage’s. This is one of the simplest SEO wins and the easiest to skip.
8. Add alt text to your images. Every meaningful image should have alt text describing what it shows. This helps with accessibility and gives search engines context about your content.
9. Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console. Create a free Search Console account if you don’t have one, verify your domain, and submit your XML sitemap. This is how Google actually finds and indexes your pages — waiting for Google to stumble across your site on its own can take months longer.
10. Set up Google Analytics (or a privacy-friendly alternative) before launch, not after. You want data from day one, including how your pre-launch traffic (friends, team, early visitors) behaves, so you have a real baseline to compare against later.
11. Check your robots.txt file. Make sure you haven’t accidentally left a “disallow all” rule in there from development — this single line can keep your entire site out of Google’s index and go unnoticed for weeks.
Trust and legal basics
12. Add a privacy policy and terms page. If you’re collecting any personal data through forms, this isn’t optional — it’s expected by visitors and increasingly required by law.
13. Make your contact information easy to find. A phone number, email, and physical address (even if it’s just your registered office) in the footer builds more trust than a contact form alone. If you use WhatsApp for business enquiries, link it directly — many customers in India will reach out there before filling any form.
14. If you sell anything online, test the actual payment flow. Run a real test transaction through your payment gateway in test mode. Check that GST is calculated and shown correctly, and that the invoice or receipt generated afterward has the details customers and your accountant will actually need.
One last check
15. Get someone who has never seen the site to try it. You know where everything is because you built it or commissioned it. Ask a friend, family member, or colleague to find your phone number, read your pricing, or fill out your contact form, with no guidance from you. Where they get stuck is where your actual visitors will get stuck too.
None of these fifteen checks take long individually, but skipping even two or three of them is how a new website quietly loses leads in its first month without anyone noticing why. Run through this list the week before launch, and again a few days after, once the site has had real visitors.