The Ultimate Guide to Planning a Website Launch

You’ve lastly wrapped your arms round your model’s new web site. It’s smooth. It’s quick. It makes your outdated web site appear to be a MySpace profile circa 2006. However earlier than you hit that massive shiny launch button and cue the champagne, let’s have just a little heart-to-heart about what can (and can) go sideways in case you don’t plan this factor correctly. 

Launching a web site isn’t simply flipping a change. It’s extra like choreographing a halftime present — each beat issues, each gentle has to hit good, and one rogue backup dancer (learn: broken link or lacking redirect) can blow the entire thing up. 

So whether or not you’re refreshing a present web site, migrating a website to a brand new area, or launching a brand-new one, right here’s every part you could learn about planning a web site launch — full with analysis, examples, and the checklists you could make your challenge supervisor weep with pleasure. 

A foul launch can tank your visitors and search engine optimisation and depart your group taking part in digital Whac-A-Mole for weeks as issues pop up. 

Frequent pitfalls we see when companies rush launches embrace: 

• Damaged hyperlinks and 404 errors. 

• Incorrect redirects (or no redirects in any respect). 

• Analytics not monitoring correctly. 

Let’s repair that, lets? 

Earlier than you even take into consideration going dwell, that is your prep kitchen. Nobody needs to serve uncooked hen. Right here’s your mise en place: 

1. Carry out a content material audit.

Begin your content audit by crawling your present web site with a instrument like Screaming Frog. This helps determine what pages exist; what’s rating; and what must be migrated, updated, or given a correct Viking funeral. 

Motion step: Create a spreadsheet that features: 

• Site visitors knowledge (by way of GA4 or Google Search Console). 

• Backlink worth (by way of Ahrefs). 

• Appearances in AI SERP options. 

• Referral visitors from AI-driven search platforms. 

Hold what works, ditch what doesn’t, and rewrite what’s outdated. 

2. Create a redirect map.

Each outdated URL that’s going away must be accounted for. If not? Say goodbye to your search engine optimisation fairness. 

Motion step: Create a redirect map utilizing 301 redirects (not 302s until short-term). And maintain redirects related. Sending an outdated weblog put up to your homepage is lazy and confuses customers and search engines like google and yahoo. 

Use instruments like Screaming Frog’s redirect checker to check your setup earlier than launch. 

3. QA like your digital life relies on it.

As a result of it does. Cellular responsiveness, web page load velocity, browser compatibility — all of it must be examined. Twice. Then as soon as extra for enjoyable. 

Check for: 

• Cross-browser efficiency. 

Professional tip: Assign totally different group members to “break” the positioning on totally different gadgets and report something funky. Develop and doc a QA course of for recurrently monitoring web site well being. 

4. Arrange analytics monitoring.

Few issues are worse than launching your shiny new web site and realizing you’re not monitoring a factor. 

So earlier than you go dwell, get your knowledge geese in a row. Meaning organising GA4, Google Tag Supervisor, and any heatmapping instruments (like Hotjar) forward of time. 

However right here’s the place lots of people cease — and the place you’re going to be smarter. 

Sure, GA4 and GTM are must-haves, however your advertising and marketing automation platform additionally must be related from the soar. Suppose HubSpot, Pardot, Marketo — the entire martech band must play in sync. 

Why? When your types are related to your MAP and constructed with hidden fields (like UTM parameters, supply, marketing campaign, and referrer), you’re capturing true attribution. You’ll know precisely the place leads are coming from, and also you’ll have the ability to monitor the whole purchaser’s journey past simply the shape fill. 

Make sure that: 

• GA4 is correctly configured with occasion monitoring (like type submissions, button clicks, scroll depth, and many others.). 

• Google Tag Supervisor is put in and firing appropriately. 

• Conversion objectives are arrange (together with micro-conversions). 

• Filters and views are double-checked (as a result of your inside IP shouldn’t skew your knowledge). 

• Advertising automation is totally built-in and types are passing knowledge seamlessly. 

• Hidden fields are capturing key attribution knowledge (supply, medium, marketing campaign, and many others.). 

• All lead exercise out of your web site is feeding into your CRM or MAP for downstream nurture, scoring, and gross sales enablement. 

Backside line: Analytics + automation = advertising and marketing visibility nirvana. When every part’s stitched collectively correctly, you’ll not solely know who transformed, however you’ll additionally know why, how, and what to do subsequent. 

It’s go time! Right here’s your web site launch day guidelines to see the very best outcomes: 

1. Launch throughout low visitors instances.

Midnight or early morning. Not Friday. By no means Friday. You don’t need to uncover a 500 error at 4:59 p.m. earlier than a protracted weekend. That’s how ulcers are born. 

2. Carry out post-launch QA.

Undergo your guidelines once more. Crawl the positioning for errors. Verify that your XML sitemap is submitted to Google Search Console. Confirm that redirects are working. Check key person paths. 

Professional tip: Use Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for a post-launch crawl to catch any missed points. 

3. Inform the world (and Google).

Submit your sitemap in Google Search Console. Ping Google with Fetch and Render. Share the launch on social, e-mail your subscribers, and pat your dev group on the again — they’ve earned it! 

Don’t launch your web site and stroll away. That is your follow-up period. 

Monitor: 

• Site visitors patterns in GA4 (and examine to pre-launch metrics). 

• Key phrase rankings (by way of Ahrefs or Semrush). 

• Bounce charge, time on web site, and conversion paths. 

• Technical well being. (Crawl weekly for the primary month.) 

Iterate: 

Use heatmaps, person session recordings, and person suggestions to constantly enhance the person expertise. Your launch is a chapter, not the entire e book. 

A internetweb site launch is your digital debutante ball. Don’t present up with broccoli in your enamel. With a stable technique, ruthless consideration to element, and a group that is aware of what they’re doing, you can also make your launch a chef’s kiss second that units your model up for long-term success.