On Wednesday I launched a website for my mum's garden service business. The design had been finished for days. Launch day is where most small business sites quietly go wrong, because the list of things to do has nothing to do with how the site looks.
Nothing here is advanced. It is just the order I worked in, and the reason each step is there. If you are getting a site built, or you already have one, it is a fair way to check that nothing was skipped.
1. The domain sits in the owner's name
The domain was bought in my mum's own account, not mine. My tools can sit under my login. Anything the business depends on, such as the domain, should sit under the business owner's. It is the same rule I wrote about in who owns your Google Business Profile, and it is the easiest one to fix on day one and the hardest one to fix three years later.
2. Both versions of the address work, and one sends people to the other
People type the address with www and without it. If both load as separate copies of the site, Google sees two sites with the same content. So I pointed the domain at the host, then set up a redirect so the www version always lands on the main address. One address, one site.
3. The security basics
- The padlock. The site loads over https on every page.
- Security headers. A short set of instructions the site sends to the browser. Most small business sites have none. I check they are there and that nothing broke.
- Two step verification on the accounts that control the domain and the hosting, so a stolen password alone is not enough.
- Nothing private in a public place. The code for the site sits in a private repository, and I check no keys or passwords are in it.
4. Tell Google the site exists
A new site is invisible until Google finds it. I verified the site in Google Search Console, submitted the sitemap, and asked Google to index the home page. That does not rank the site. It just means Google knows it is there. If you want the longer version of how this works, how a new site gets found covers it, and whether Google can even see your site shows how to check.
Expect the first week or two to show almost nothing. A new site has very little data, and a handful of impressions tells you nothing yet.
5. Link the site from the Google Business Profile
For a local business the Google listing is often seen before the website. If it still points at an old page, a directory or nothing at all, people never reach the new site. I added the website link to the profile the same day.
6. Test it on a phone, and test again after every change
Most visitors to a small business site arrive on a phone. I checked every page at phone width before launch. After launch I made a small change to one of the scripts, and a single wrong character stopped the video clips playing on several pages. Nobody had complained, because nobody had visited yet. I only found it because I tested again straight after the change, and it was fixed within the hour.
The lesson is simple. Any change, even a tiny one, deserves another look on a phone before you leave it.
7. Check the speed, then fix what it shows
The first speed test on the new site was weaker on mobile than I wanted. A few fixes later, mostly smaller images and lazy loading of the heavy video, the mobile score went from 76 to 89 and desktop sat at 100. The method for testing speed fairly, and what usually causes the slowness, is in why your website feels slow on a phone.
8. Lock the colour scheme
Many phones now switch to dark mode automatically, and some browsers will recolour a website to match. A design your client approved in light can end up looking washed out or broken on a phone set to dark. One line in the page head and one in the stylesheet tell the browser to leave the colours alone. I test it by forcing dark mode in the browser and comparing the two screenshots.
9. Then the listings
After the site itself, the free business directories are next. The rule is the same name, phone number and website on every one of them. Mismatches are what make Google less sure a business is who it says it is, so this step is about being identical, not about volume.
The short version
- Domain in the owner's name.
- Both address versions work, one redirects to the other.
- Padlock, security headers, two step verification, nothing private in public.
- Search Console verified, sitemap submitted, home page indexing requested.
- Website link added to the Google Business Profile.
- Every page tested on a phone, again after every change.
- Speed checked and fixed.
- Colour scheme locked.
- Directory listings with identical details.
If your site went live without most of these, that is not a disaster. It is a list you can work through this week. If you want a second pair of eyes on it, book a free call and I will go through it with you. You can see the garden service site this list came from, and how I price and plan a build is on the pricing page.