What to do after your website launches: the first 90 days

In the first 48 hours after launch, confirm that Google can reach the site, that forms deliver, and that nothing is erroring. In the first week, read what Search Console and analytics show. In the first month, fix what they find and update everywhere else the old site was mentioned. After that, the site needs a routine: updates, backups, a monthly look at the numbers, and content changes when the business changes.

That is the order. The sections below say what to check at each step and what to leave alone.

What should you check in the first 48 hours?

The launch checklist should have been run on the live site in the first hour. The next two days are about things that only show up once real visitors and real crawlers arrive.

• Open the site from a phone on mobile data, from a second network, and from a colleague's computer. DNS changes reach different networks at different times; if one of them still shows the old site, wait for the TTL and check again rather than editing records.
• Confirm https:// on every form of the domain: www, non-www, and any old subdomains, each redirecting in one hop.
• Submit the sitemap in Search Console if that was not done at launch, and use URL Inspection to request indexing of the homepage and the five most important pages. Google's documentation on URL Inspection explains what each status means.
• Send one real enquiry through every form and every WhatsApp and phone link, from a phone, and confirm it reached the person who will answer it.
• Check the error log or monitoring service for anything new. A site that was clean on staging often shows a handful of 404s in the first day from old links and bots.
• Leave the old hosting alone. It stays for two weeks in case something needs to be recovered.

If nobody on your team owns these checks after the developer's handover, a website maintenance plan exists for exactly this: someone whose job is to watch the site in the weeks when problems appear.

What should you look at in the first week?

By day three Google has usually crawled most of the site, and the reports start to mean something.

Search Console, Pages report. This lists what is indexed and what is not, with reasons. "Excluded by noindex tag" on live pages means the staging block was left on. "Not found (404)" lists URLs Google still knows from the old site that have no redirect; each one needs a 301 or a decision to let it go. "Crawled, currently not indexed" on a new site is normal for a few weeks.

Search Console, Performance report. On a redesign, compare clicks and impressions with the same week before launch. A small dip while Google reprocesses the site is common. A large one points to redirects or titles.

Analytics. Confirm sessions arrive from organic search, direct and referrals, and that the conversion events fire for real enquiries, not only your tests. Exclude your own office and the developer's IP if that was not done.

Uptime and errors. Any alert in week one is a sign of something that will recur. Fix the cause, not the symptom.

The enquiries themselves. Read every one. The first week's messages tell you whether the site attracts the people you wanted, and whether the form is asking the right questions.

What should you do in the first month?

Fix what the reports found, then update the rest of the world.

1. Redirect the 404s that still get traffic or have links from other sites. The rest can return 404 honestly.
2. Adjust titles and descriptions on pages whose impressions are high and clicks low, one page at a time, and note the date so you can see the effect.
3. Update the site link everywhere it appears: Google Business Profile, social profiles, email signatures, directory listings, marketplace profiles, the footer of invoices and proposals, and any partner sites that link to you. Old links to redirected URLs still work; links to a URL that was dropped do not.
4. Tell your clients. One short email with a link, and a LinkedIn post. Tag the link with the UTM builder so the visits from the announcement are visible in analytics separately from everything else.
5. Get the sales team using it. A new site is only useful if the people talking to customers link to its pages instead of attaching PDFs.
6. Wait for Core Web Vitals. The Search Console report needs 28 days of real-visitor data before it says anything. When it does, the Core Web Vitals checker tells you whether the numbers pass.

What not to do in the first month: redesign anything. Four weeks of data from a new site is not enough to judge a headline, a layout or a page. Write down what you think should change and revisit it at 90 days.

What does ongoing maintenance involve?

A launched site is a running system, and the work of keeping it running is small but constant. Our website maintenance guide covers each task in detail; this is the routine.

The row that gets missed is the last one. Staff leave with admin logins, agencies change, and the person who set up analytics is nobody anyone remembers. Keep one document listing every account and who owns it, and review it when anyone leaves.

A WordPress site needs the update and backup rows every week, because plugins are where security problems arrive. A static or Next.js site needs them far less often, which is one reason we recommend that platform for sites with no in-house technical staff.

What should you measure, and when?

Enquiries, by source. Not traffic, not rankings, not a score. The question a company website has to answer is whether it produces conversations with the right people, and the way to know is a monthly count of enquiries, where each came from, and how many became customers.

• Month one: does anything arrive, and from where? Direct and referral traffic from the announcement dominate; organic search is just starting.
• Month three: organic search should be a visible share. Compare the conversion rate of organic visitors to the others; it is usually the highest.
• Month six: this is the first point at which rankings for competitive terms mean anything, and the first time to judge whether blog content, if any, is paying off.

Judge the site at 90 days, not at 30 and not at 7. Before then, the data is too thin and the instinct to change things is strongest.

When is it time to change something?

After 90 days, with the data in front of you, in this order of effort:

1. Headlines and calls to action on the pages with the most visits and the fewest enquiries. Cheap to change, quick to measure.
2. Form fields. If visitors reach the form and leave, it is asking for too much.
3. Page titles and descriptions for pages with impressions but few clicks.
4. New pages for questions that enquiries keep asking and the site does not answer.
5. Structure or design changes only when the above has been tried and the problem is clearly the layout.

A redesign is the last resort, not the first, and most sites that get redesigned at year two needed the first four items at month four. The planning work in our guide on how to plan a company website is what makes these small changes possible later: a site with a clear page list, an owner and a CMS the team can use is one that gets improved instead of replaced.