What to do in the first month after a new website launches

The first month after a new website launches is for watching, not redesigning. Check every day that enquiries arrive, ask callers how they found you, fix the small things customers point out, and use Google Search Console to find any old page addresses you missed. Keep the old site's account until the month is over. By week four you will know whether the new site is doing its job, and what to add next.

Week one: make sure nothing is getting lost

The biggest risk right after a launch is not a design problem. It is a message that never reaches you. A form that sends to an old address, or email that stopped when the domain moved, can cost you a week of work before anyone notices.

Every day this week:

Look in your inbox and your spam folder for form messages. New sites send from a new system, and some email programs treat that as suspicious at first. If you find one in spam, mark it "not spam" so the next ones land properly.
Send yourself one test through the contact form every couple of days, from your phone.
Ask every new caller a simple question: "How did you find us?" Write the answer down. "Your website" is the answer you are listening for, and "I tried your form but..." is the one you must act on.
Watch your email for messages from regular suppliers and customers. If they suddenly go quiet, check that mail is still arriving.

If the form messages are not arriving, stop and fix that first. Making sure contact form messages never get lost walks through the usual causes.

Week two: fix the small things

By now you and the people around you have used the site a few times. You will have a short list of small things: a photo that crops someone's head on a phone, an outdated line in the about page, a service you forgot to mention, hours that need a holiday note.

Fix them now, while they are fresh. If your site has an editor or a panel, most of these are a minute each. If your provider makes the changes, send them in one list rather than one at a time.

Two habits help this week:

Read the site once on your phone as if you were a stranger. Start on the home page and try to answer the questions a new customer has: what do you do, do you come to my town, what does it roughly cost, how do I reach you.
Listen to the questions callers ask. If three people ask whether you do the same thing, the site should answer it. Add one sentence where they would look.

Do not start redesigning sections because you are tired of looking at them. You see the site far more often than any customer does. Change what customers stumble on, not what bores you.

Week three: open Google Search Console

Google Search Console is Google's free tool for site owners. It shows which pages Google has found, which ones it cannot open, and what people searched before they clicked on your site. If you have not set it up, do it now at search.google.com/search-console. Google Search Console for owners explains the setup in plain steps.

Three things to look at in the first month:

Sitemaps. Submit the new site's sitemap (usually your address followed by /sitemap.xml) so Google has the full list of new pages.
Pages report, "Not found (404)". These are addresses Google tried to open and found nothing. After a redesign they are usually old page addresses that were not forwarded to their new pages. Click each one, decide which new page it should send people to, and have a forward set up. This is the single most useful thing Search Console will show you this month.
Performance report. Note how many clicks the site got and which searches brought them. Do not read too much into the first weeks; Google takes a while to reread a redesigned site, and the numbers can wobble. Nobody can tell you exactly how long that takes, so watch the trend over months rather than days.

Week four: tidy up and plan ahead

Now that the site has run for a month, close the loose ends.

The old site. If everything works and you have saved a copy of the old text, photos and page addresses, you can cancel the old hosting or builder plan. Check first that it does not include your email or your domain. Turn off auto-renew rather than deleting the account on the spot, so you have a little time to change your mind.
Renewal dates. Put your domain renewal, and any yearly website or email fee, in your calendar with a reminder a month before.
Logins. Write down where each login lives, and make sure someone you trust can find them if you are away.
Your Google Business Profile. Add a few recent photos of your work, and check that the website link points to the right page.
The next addition. Pick one thing the site could use in the coming months: photos of recent jobs, a page for a service you do more of now, answers to the questions callers asked in week two.

What not to worry about in the first month

Small ups and downs in visits. A few days of fewer visitors, or more, rarely means anything in a small business. Enquiries are the number that matters.
Your design score in some online checker. Fix real problems it finds, like huge images, and ignore the rest.
Emails offering to "fix your new site's SEO". These arrive after almost every launch. SEO scams small business owners should ignore explains why most can go straight to the bin.

Your first-month checklist

Daily: inbox and spam folder checked for form messages.
Every caller asked how they found you; answers written down.
One list of small fixes made in week two.
Search Console set up, sitemap submitted, missing pages forwarded.
Old site cancelled only after email and domain are confirmed separate.
Renewal dates in your calendar.
One addition chosen for the next season.

After a few months, compare enquiries with the same months last year; how to tell if a redesign worked shows how to do it fairly. And if your launch is still ahead of you, you can see your site rebuilt first and plan this month before you switch.