Pre-launch best practices & checklist
Before you launch
By this point, you’ve seen how to stage changes, control what gets published, and choose the right publishing workflow.
Now it’s time to make sure the site itself is ready.
The Build & launch checklist gives your team one place to review launch readiness instead of relying on memory, scattered notes, or one person knowing what still needs attention.
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What should I review before launch?
The checklist covers the major areas worth reviewing before your final publish.
SEO
Review metadata, indexing, redirects, sitemaps, SSL, and other search-readiness settings.
Accessibility
Audit the site for accessibility, including keyboard navigation, screen reader compatibility, color contrast, and more.
Designer cleanup
Remove unfinished pages and clean up unused classes, interactions, components, and assets before launch.
Site optimization
Review images, fonts, custom code, scripts, and publishing settings that can affect site performance.
Forms
Confirm your form settings are configured correctly, then test submissions from start to finish.
Security headers
Review frame protections and custom security headers, and make sure they work as expected before production.
QA
Test the site across devices and browsers, including forms, interactions, integrations, analytics, and accessibility.
Backups
Create a named pre-launch backup so your team has a clear restore point before the site goes live.
Use staging for your final review
Once you’ve worked through the checklist, publish the site to staging and review it one more time in a published environment.
This is your chance to catch anything that behaves differently outside Webflow before you move the site to production.
That might include things like links and forms, interactions and animations, custom code and integrations, responsive behavior across devices, analytics or tracking, and anything else that depends on the published environment.
If your team requires stakeholder, legal, or internal approval, staging is also a natural place to complete that final sign-off.
Treat staging as the final checkpoint, not the first place you discover whether the site is ready. Work through the checklist first, then use staging to validate the published experience.
Then move into launch
The checklist separates pre-launch readiness from the steps that actually make your production site available to visitors.
Once the site is ready, the launch section walks through tasks such as adding your custom domain, verifying domain ownership, publishing the site to production, updating DNS records, etc.
Use the checklist as your shared source of truth with your team to verify that your site is ready, review it in staging, and then move through the launch steps deliberately to ensure a smooth launch.
Ready to continue?
Next, you’ll shift from launch day to the ongoing publishing habits that keep your site in sync over time.