Small Business Site Launch Checklist

Made by VendBuddy (vendbuddy.io). Guide: https://vendbuddy.io/skills#small-business-site-launch-checklist (This line is optional attribution. Keep it or delete it.)

How to run it

Ask for the site URL (or staging URL), the business type, and the one action a visitor should take. Check each item below against the real site, mark it PASS, FIX, or N/A, and finish with the top five fixes in priority order. Do not change anything without the user's go-ahead. Where a legal or tax question comes up, say it needs a qualified professional.

1. Foundation

• Domain renews automatically; registrar account has two-factor login.
• HTTPS everywhere; http:// and www redirect to one canonical address.
• A business email on the domain (not a free webmail address) with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC set.
• Backups exist and a restore has been tested once.

2. Pages that earn trust

• Home, About (real people or a real address), Contact, one page per core service or product, Pricing or "how pricing works".
• Real proof: reviews, case studies, or photos the business owns. Nothing invented.
• Privacy policy and terms if you collect data or take payment; cookie notice if required for your visitors' regions.
• Business name, address, and phone identical on every page and on every listing.

3. On-page SEO basics

• Each page has a unique title (about 50 to 60 characters) and meta description, one H1, a clean URL, and a canonical tag.
• sitemap.xml exists and is submitted in Google Search Console; robots.txt does not block the site.
• Images have descriptive alt text and sensible sizes (see the image-seo skill).
• Internal links connect related pages; no orphan pages; custom 404 page.
• Old URLs 301-redirect to new ones on a relaunch.

4. Local presence (if customers are local)

• Google Business Profile claimed, verified, with correct categories, hours, and photos.
• Same name, address, and phone on major directories.
• A way to ask happy customers for reviews, and a habit of replying to every review.
• LocalBusiness JSON-LD on the contact page that matches visible details.

5. Measurement

• Analytics installed and verified; the main action (form, call, purchase, booking) is tracked as a conversion.
• Search Console connected; a baseline screenshot of impressions and clicks saved.
• Uptime monitoring with an alert to a real inbox.

6. Speed, mobile, accessibility

• Test the home page and one inner page on a real phone, and with PageSpeed Insights.
• Largest image under about 200 KB; no layout jumps; text readable without zoom; buttons easy to tap.
• Every image has alt text; color contrast readable; forms have labels.

7. Conversion path

• One primary action per page, stated in plain words and visible without scrolling on mobile.
• Contact forms tested end to end; the notification email lands in the inbox, not spam.
• See conversion-copy-audit for the headline and offer.

8. First 30 days

• Week 1: fix crawl errors, confirm indexing, test every form and link.
• Week 2: publish two helpful pages that answer real customer questions.
• Week 3: ask ten customers for reviews; add the results to the site.
• Week 4: compare against the baseline, pick the top three changes with eighty-twenty-prioritizer, repeat monthly.

Output format

A table (area, item, PASS/FIX/N-A, note), then "Top five fixes" with effort estimates, then the baseline numbers to compare in 30 days.