Launch Day Checklist: What to Check Before, During and After You Post

What is a launch day checklist for, and what is it not for?

Launch day is the one day when strangers arrive faster than you can watch them, so anything broken stays broken in front of the most people. A checklist keeps your attention on the few things that matter while your pulse is up. It does not decide whether the product is good, and it cannot promise votes, visitors or sales. It only makes sure that the people who do show up find a working page and a maker who answers.

The list below is split into stages because each stage has a different failure. Before you post, the risk is a broken path. In the first hours, it is silence from you. In the afternoon, it is drifting into busywork. At night, it is forgetting what you learned. If you want the same day laid out by the clock, the hour-by-hour launch day schedule does that; this page is the pass-or-fail version you can tick down.

Which gate checks come before you press publish?

Run these in order, on your phone for the first three, because that is where many first visits happen. Stop at the first failure and fix it before you go on.

1. Open the exact URL you will post in a private browser window, because a cached session hides a broken signup.
2. Click your main call to action as a new visitor and finish the path, since the path is what the launch is really sending people into.
3. Sign up with an email address you have never used on the product, so you meet the same welcome email and first screen a stranger meets.
4. Check that every link on the page returns a page and not an error; a dead link in the first screen costs you the visitor and the trust together.
5. Load the page on a mobile connection, not your office network, because slow first paint is invisible from fast wifi.
6. Confirm your analytics records a visit with the tagged link you will use for this post, otherwise you will not know which channel worked.
7. Make sure the contact address on the page reaches you today, since early questions often arrive by email.
8. Freeze deploys: nothing new goes to production until tonight, because a late fix is the usual cause of a launch-day outage.

Then publish. If you launch on the board at launch your product free, remember the order: submit the form, open the single link in the confirmation email and press Publish. An unconfirmed launch is deleted after 24 hours, so a launch you forgot to confirm never appears.

What should you do in the first four hours?

1. Before you press Publish, open the draft page as a stranger would and read the tagline aloud; the launch is final once it is live, so a line that reads wrongly gets fixed now.
2. Send the tagged link to the three people who said they wanted to hear about it, because personal messages get replies that a public post does not.
3. Answer the first comment within minutes, using the commenter’s own words, since an early reply shows others that someone is home.
4. Keep a running note of every question and every confusion, because each one is a sentence your page failed to say.
5. Fix a typo or an unclear sentence right away; leave anything that needs a code change until the tally of complaints is clear.
6. Check support email and your error log once an hour, so a silent crash does not run all afternoon.

Do not ask friends to vote. It teaches you nothing about demand and breaks the rules of most places that rank launches. Ask them instead to try one specific task and tell you where they got stuck; that request is easy to answer honestly. For wording that stays specific, see the feedback request template.

How do you spend the rest of the day?

After the first rush there are three jobs and no others. Keep answering. Group the problems you have collected into two piles, the ones that block a visitor from finishing the main path and the ones that merely irritate. Ship the first pile only if the fix is small and you can test it in minutes; write the second pile down for tomorrow.

• Reply first, build second. A visitor who got an answer is likelier to come back than one who got a patch note.
• Post once more only where you are welcome. One community where the problem is discussed, following its self-promotion rules, is plenty; see how to launch in online communities.
• Take a screenshot of the rankings or feed at a few points in the day, because positions change and you will want to describe the day accurately later.
• Eat and step away for ten minutes. Replies written tired read as defensive.

What should you save before you go to bed?

Memory rounds every day up. Spend fifteen minutes at night recording what is true while it is fresh: how many people reached the page, how many finished the main action, what they asked, and what you changed. The numbers do not have to be impressive; they have to be written down so day two starts from fact. The launch metrics to track page lists the few figures worth keeping.

PRODUCT: 
TAGGED LINK USED: 
POSTED AT (my time / UTC): 
WHERE POSTED: 

VISITS BY CHANNEL
- channel / visits / signups or first uses:

COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS (one line each)
1. 
2. 
3. 

WHAT BROKE OR CONFUSED PEOPLE
- 

FIXED TODAY
- 

FIX TOMORROW (blocks the main path first)
- 

ONE THING I WOULD CHANGE ABOUT THE PAGE:

What can you safely skip on launch day?

• A redesign. Visitors judge the page that exists, and a half-finished redesign is how outages happen.
• New features. Anything not on the page yesterday cannot be the reason a stranger stays today.
• A press push to people who do not know you. It deserves its own week; read the press kit checklist when you are ready.
• Posting everywhere at once. You cannot reply in six places for four hours, and unanswered comments cost more than a missing listing.
• Checking vanity numbers every few minutes. Look at the clock hourly, not the counter.

Which launch day mistakes cost the most time?

Once the day is over, move on to the post-launch checklist. If your product still needs groundwork before any of this, start with the pre-launch checklist, and browse the ideas board if you want to see how other builders describe a product in one line.