Small Business Website Launch Checklist (Before You Share)

By Cedar & Ledger

Your site loads on your computer, so it's tempting to post the link right away. But the first people who visit are often the ones you most want to call you, and a broken phone link or wrong hours can cost you that call. This checklist covers the checks to run before you share the address: links, details, how it looks in Google and in a shared link, speed, HTTPS and a quick test with a friend. It takes about 30 to 60 minutes for a one-page site.

The business name, phone number, file sizes and connection speed below are made-up examples, not measurements of any real site. Hosts change their screens, so use your own host's help pages if a step looks different. This is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Cedar & Ledger isn't affiliated with any host or company named here.

Quick checklist

• ☐ Tap every phone, email and map link on a real phone
• ☐ Name, address, phone and hours match your Google listing exactly
• ☐ Spelling and placeholder text checked (read it out loud)
• ☐ Page title and description written for your business
• ☐ Favicon (the tiny tab icon) is yours
• ☐ Photos resized so the page loads fast on a phone
• ☐ HTTPS padlock shows on every address
• ☐ A wrong address shows a "not found" page, not a blank screen
• ☐ Shared-link preview checked in a text or social post
• ☐ One friend can find your phone number in 10 seconds

The steps below walk through each one.

Step 1: Tap every link on a real phone

Most local customers will visit on a phone, so test there, not only on a computer.

• Phone links: tap each "Call" button. Your phone should open the dialer with the right number already typed. A link written as tel:+15551234567 (example number) should match the number shown on the button. If you added a contact form or booking link, send yourself a test message and a test booking too (how to set those up).
• Email links: tap each email link and check the "To" address. Send yourself a test message to make sure the inbox works.
• Map link: tap "Open in Google Maps" (or similar) and make sure it lands on your business or service area, not a random street.
• Every other link: social profiles, booking pages, any page you link to. Fix or delete anything that goes nowhere.

Do this with Wi-Fi off once, so you see what a customer on mobile data sees.

Step 2: Match your details to your Google listing

Your business name, address, phone number and hours should read the same on your website as on your Google Business Profile, invoices and social profiles. Small differences ("St." on one, "Street" on the other) are usually fine, but a different phone number or old hours confuse people.

Make a quick check table:

If you're not on Google Maps yet, How to Put Your Business on Google Maps for Free (Steps) walks through it.

Step 3: Hunt down spelling and placeholder text

Read the page out loud, top to bottom, slowly. Then search the file for leftovers from the template or an old draft: words like "lorem," "example," "Your Town," "555," "placeholder" or "TODO." Replace placeholder reviews with real ones from real customers (with their OK), or remove that section until you have some. Don't publish made-up reviews. Still writing the text itself? How to Write Your Small Business Website Text (Examples) walks through each section.

Step 4: Write the page title and description

The page title is the text in the browser tab and usually the blue headline in Google results. The description is the short line under it (Google sometimes writes its own instead). Both live near the top of the HTML file.

• Title: business name, what you do, where. Example: "Hillside Plumbing Co. | Plumber in Your Town, TX."
• Description: one or two plain sentences about what you do and how to reach you, about 150 characters or less so it isn't cut off.

Free One-Page Website for a Local Business: What to Include covers the rest of what belongs on the page.

Step 5: Swap in your own favicon

The favicon is the small icon on the browser tab and in bookmarks. A template's default icon looks unfinished. Use a simple version of your logo or your initials, saved as a small square image, and point the <link rel="icon"> line at it. Reload the page (sometimes in a private window) to see the change.

Step 6: Shrink your photos so the page loads fast

Photos straight from a phone are often several megabytes each, which makes a page slow on mobile data. Resize them to about the width they show on screen (for a full-width photo, around 1,600 pixels wide is usually plenty) and save as JPG or WebP. What Photos to Put on a Small Business Website covers which photos are worth including.

Example (made-up numbers): on a connection that downloads 5 megabits per second, one 4.2 MB phone photo takes about 4.2 × 8 ÷ 5 ≈ 6.7 seconds to arrive. Resized to 0.3 MB, it takes about 0.3 × 8 ÷ 5 ≈ 0.5 seconds. With three photos, that's about 20 seconds vs about 1.4 seconds. Real speeds vary a lot, so test on your own phone with Wi-Fi off.

Free tools like Google's PageSpeed Insights can show which files are slowing the page down.

Step 7: Make sure HTTPS is on everywhere

Open your site and look for the padlock in the address bar. Check every address people might type: yourbusiness.com, www.yourbusiness.com, and your host's free address if you used one. Each should end up on the padlock version. Most free hosts turn HTTPS on automatically once your domain works; if you're still setting up a domain, How to Connect a Custom Domain to Your Website (Steps) covers it.

Step 8: Check what a wrong address shows

Type your address with a made-up page on the end, like yourbusiness.com/abc123. You should get a "page not found" message, ideally with a link back to your home page. Many hosts show their own not-found page by default, and some let you add a file called 404.html for a custom one. Check your host's docs.

Step 9: Check the shared-link preview

When you paste your link into a text message or social post, most apps show a little preview card with a title, a line of text and sometimes an image. Paste your link into a message to yourself and look at it. If the title or text looks wrong, fix your page title and description (Step 4). For a preview image, many sites add "Open Graph" tags (og:title, og:description, og:image) in the page's head; the platform's own help pages explain the exact tags they read. Apps can cache old previews for a while, so a fix may not show right away.

Step 10: The 10-second friend test

Hand your phone to a friend with the site open and ask: "Find the phone number and call it." Count. If they can't do it in about 10 seconds, move the phone number or "Call" button higher, or make it bigger. Then ask one more question: "What does this business do, and where?" If they hesitate, rewrite the first line of the page.

Once it's shared, How to Get Your Business Website on Google Search (Free) covers checking that Google has the page and setting up the free Search Console.

Common snags

• Testing only on a computer. Phone links and layout problems often only show on a phone.
• Old hours in one place. When hours change, update the site and the Google listing the same day. How to Post Holiday Hours for a Small Business (Checklist) lists every place to check.
• Leaving template text in. Search for "example," "555," "Your Town" and "lorem" before sharing.
• Huge photos. Resize before uploading; a phone camera's original file is rarely needed on a web page.
• Sharing the free host address, then switching to a domain later. If you can, set up the domain first so the link you share is the one you keep.

A simple site to launch

These checks work for any website. If you'd like a head start on the site itself, the One-Page Local Business Website Template ($12, HTML and CSS) has tap-to-call and tap-to-email links, an "Open in Google Maps" button, a page title and description to edit, a favicon slot, LocalBusiness structured data and a README with steps for free hosts (Netlify Drop, GitHub Pages, Cloudflare Pages). It's a file you edit, not a drag-and-drop builder, so it's best if you're comfortable editing text, and you host it yourself. It doesn't include a domain, a contact form backend or share-preview image tags (details).

Honest note: I make this template and sell it under Cedar & Ledger, so I'd earn from a purchase. Not affiliated with any host or company named here. General information only, not legal, tax or financial advice.

Try the free website cost calculator →

Related template: read about the html business template template

See all Cedar & Ledger templates