The launch day landing page checklist

Launch day is the worst time to discover that your sitemap is missing the press kit URL, or that your meta image is the default. Most launches fail not because the product is bad, but because the surfaces around the product weren't ready.

Here's the checklist, broken by timing.

One week before launch

1. 01Hero copy is final. Not "placeholder we'll polish." Final. Tested against at least three people who don't work on the product.
2. 02Pricing page exists and is correct. Visitors will go straight to it. "Pricing coming soon" is a conversion killer.
3. 03Demo or video. Even a 60-second screen recording. Visitors who land cold need to see motion, not just screenshots.
4. 04Mobile is checked. 50%+ of launch-day traffic on a Show HN or Product Hunt launch is mobile. If your hero breaks on a 375px viewport, the launch dies.

Three days before launch

1. 01Meta tags and OG images. Default Twitter cards kill social shares. Custom OG image, title, description for the homepage and at least the top 3 secondary pages.
2. 02Favicon at every size. 16, 32, 180 for Apple, 192/512 for Android.
3. 03Sitemap and robots.txt. Search engines will crawl on launch day; give them a sitemap.
4. 04Analytics installed. You'll regret it for the rest of the year if launch traffic is uninstrumented.
5. 05Status page or uptime check. If launch traffic takes you down, people need to know it's known.

Launch day morning

1. 01One last copy pass. Read every word on the homepage out loud. Typos and awkward sentences in the hero are the most-cited reason people don't trust a launch.
2. 02Test the signup flow end-to-end. From cold visit to first product action. Twice. From a different browser. From mobile.
3. 03Pre-write 3 social posts. Twitter, LinkedIn, Bluesky. Don't write them at 9am when you're nervous.
4. 04Press kit page exists. Logo, brand colors, founder photos, one-line and 100-word descriptions. Reporters will ask within an hour.

What to ship the week after

Don't disappear after launch day. The week of follow-up is where 30–50% of the long-tail conversion happens. Plan it.

• Changelog entry. Even if it's just "v1.0, launched." The changelog signals continued shipping.
• Blog post. "What we learned launching X." Builds future SEO traffic.
• Replies to every signup. For your first 100 users, send a personal welcome email. This is the highest-leverage hour of your month.
• Thank-you to early signups. A short email a week after launch to people who signed up day-1. Builds loyalty cheaply.

Build one

The launches collection has launch-page patterns, press kits, and changelog templates. Pair with the landing pages collection, your launch page is your highest-traffic landing surface and deserves the most polish.