Website redesign launch checklist for agencies replacing an existing site

Name the final client approver and confirm who can approve redesign scope and timing.

Confirm the launch scope, including redesigned pages, unchanged pages, retired pages, and excluded domains.

Inventory priority legacy URLs from analytics, Search Console, paid campaigns, backlinks, and sales team input.

Approve the redirect map for changed, merged, removed, and renamed pages.

Confirm which legacy content should be preserved, rewritten, archived, redirected, or intentionally removed.

Approve final copy for homepage, service pages, landing pages, legal pages, and high-traffic blog content.

Confirm brand assets, imagery, testimonials, case studies, awards, logos, and downloadable files are approved.

Review navigation, footer, internal links, calls to action, and conversion paths against the approved sitemap.

Confirm forms, CRM routing, autoresponders, booking embeds, chat widgets, and notification owners.

Confirm DNS owner, hosting owner, deployment owner, rollback owner, and launch-window availability.

Review metadata, canonical tags, robots directives, XML sitemap expectations, and structured data changes.

Confirm analytics, Tag Manager, conversion goals, consent behavior, and third-party scripts are ready.

Complete responsive QA for priority templates, menus, sticky elements, modals, and embedded tools.

Separate launch blockers from accepted post-launch polish and assign each exception an owner.

Prepare the final approval request with scope, known exceptions, launch timing, and rollback plan.

Take a final backup or export of the old site before deployment or DNS changes.

Deploy the approved build, theme, or CMS release using the documented production process.

Update DNS, hosting, or deployment aliases only inside the approved launch window.

Verify SSL, canonical host, www or apex behavior, and forced HTTPS after production changes.

Run smoke tests on homepage, priority landing pages, navigation, footer, search, and key CTAs.

Submit each production form and confirm the correct inbox, CRM, or automation receives it.

Test booking, chat, newsletter, downloads, gated assets, ecommerce, or payment paths if present.

Run redirect checks for priority legacy URLs, paid campaign URLs, backlink URLs, and old navigation paths.

Verify robots.txt, XML sitemap, canonical tags, noindex rules, hreflang if used, and Search Console access.

Confirm analytics page views, conversion events, Tag Manager tags, pixels, and consent behavior on production.

Check mobile pages, menus, buttons, forms, popups, embeds, and sticky elements on real breakpoints.

Review page speed, image loading, font loading, and visible layout shifts on the most important templates.

Confirm social previews, Open Graph images, favicon, app icons, and share metadata on priority pages.

Ask the final approver to approve launch, approve with listed exceptions, or reject due to blockers.

Record the launch decision, timestamp, approver, known exceptions, and immediate post-launch owners.

Monitor uptime, DNS stability, SSL status, deployment health, and rollback signals during the first day.

Review analytics traffic, source attribution, conversion paths, form submissions, and lead quality after launch.

Check Search Console coverage, submitted sitemap, crawl errors, indexing status, and query changes.

Review 404 logs, analytics landing-page errors, and redirect reports for missing legacy redirects.

Validate paid campaign landing URLs, email links, QR codes, sales collateral links, and social profile links.

Confirm stakeholder feedback is triaged as blocker, quick fix, post-launch task, or future improvement.

Review legal, privacy, accessibility, cookie, and compliance items that were accepted as exceptions.

Confirm temporary launch users, staging access, preview passwords, and elevated permissions are removed.

Document final redirect decisions, retired content decisions, and any pages intentionally left unpublished.

Schedule post-launch SEO, performance, analytics, and conversion reviews with named owners.

Send the client the production URL, approval record, known exceptions, and support process.

Confirm post-launch content edits have owners, deadlines, and approval expectations.

Monitor branded search, top service pages, and high-value blog posts during the first full week.

Archive launch notes, rollback notes, QA evidence, final approval, and accepted exceptions.

Close the redesign launch only after critical issues are resolved or accepted by the final approver.