The 12-Point Pre-Launch Checklist.

The list we run before every site we build goes live.

Most website launches skip half of this. The result is the slow, leaky, half-broken site you’re probably stuck with right now. Run it on your own site — or on someone else’s quote — and you’ll know exactly what to ask for.

Performance

1. Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds on 4G mobile. Test at pagespeed.web.dev. Above 2.5s costs you 25%+ of mobile visitors.

2. All images served as WebP or AVIF, lazy-loaded, sized to display. A 4000×3000 JPG used at 800×600 is 5× more data than needed.

3. CSS and JS minified; no render-blocking resources in the head. Defer non-critical JS. Inline critical CSS.

SEO

4. Every page has a unique title, meta description, and H1. Duplicates kill rankings.

5. Schema markup validates. Run URLs through Google’s Rich Results Test.

6. Sitemap generated and submitted to Google Search Console. Indexed count should match real page count.

Forms & Conversion

7. Forms validated, spam-filtered, routing to a real inbox. Submit from different device + non-work email to verify.

8. Conversion events firing in GA4 and Google Search Console. Use DebugView while submitting.

Security

9. SSL, HSTS, security headers configured. Run through securityheaders.com — aim for A or A+.

10. WordPress core, themes, and plugins up to date; no abandoned plugins. Anything not updated in 12+ months is a vulnerability.

Accessibility & Hygiene

11. Image alt text on every meaningful image; no broken links. Run Wave.webaim.org. ADA exposure starts here.

12. 301 redirects from every old URL after a redesign. Use the Redirection plugin.

What now? If you found three or more broken on your own site, that’s roughly what every SMB site looks like out there. None of it is hard to fix once you know about it.

If you want us to run this on your site as part of a deeper review, that’s the $399 RealPoint Strategy Session.

📌 TODO_CHECKLIST_PDF_URL: this content is also available as a PDF — once you’ve exported the page to PDF (e.g., via Print → Save as PDF), upload the PDF to the Media Library and link to it from the home page’s Checklist pattern download button.