Small Business Website Checklist: 20 Things to Get Right Before Launch

We have built websites for coaching institutes, a college, a psychology practice, a crochet store and financial-services firms. The same issues come up every time, regardless of industry. This is the checklist we go through before any site goes live.

Content and clarity

1. The home page says, in one sentence, what you do and who it is for. Visitors decide within seconds whether they are in the right place.
2. Every service has its own section or page with real details — what is included, who it suits, how to start.
3. There is no placeholder text anywhere ("Lorem ipsum", "Your text here", sample testimonials). Search engines and customers both notice.
4. Every number on the site (clients, years, projects) is true and consistent across pages.
5. Photos are your own where possible — your team, your premises, your work. Stock photos of strangers labelled as "our clients" damage trust.

Trust

1. A full address, phone number and business email on the contact page — ideally the email uses your own domain, not a free webmail address.
2. An About page that names the people behind the business.
3. Testimonials only from real customers, with their permission, ideally with a link or full name.
4. A privacy policy explaining what the contact form collects and, if you use analytics or ads, which cookies are set.
5. Working links — click every menu item, button and footer link once before launch.

Speed and mobile

1. Images are resized to the size they are shown at and saved as WebP or compressed JPG. Uploading a 5 MB camera photo for a 400-pixel thumbnail is the most common cause of a slow site.
2. Avoid autoplaying background videos on mobile — they eat data and battery.
3. Test on a real mid-range Android phone over mobile data, not only on office Wi-Fi.
4. Buttons and links are large enough to tap, and text is readable without zooming.

Search engines

1. Every page has its own title and meta description. If every page is titled the same, search engines cannot tell them apart.
2. Pages have clean URLs (example.com/services/), not build-folder paths or query strings.
3. There is a sitemap.xml and robots.txt, and the site is added to Google Search Console.
4. The business is listed on Google Business Profile with the same name, address and phone as the website.

After launch

1. Someone is responsible for updating the site — at minimum, reviewing it once a month for outdated information, broken links and pending updates.
2. Backups run automatically and you have tested restoring one.