The first 30 days.

The website has been handed over, the domain is connected, the mockups are approved, and it seems the project is finished. In reality, the first 30 days decide whether it starts bringing in leads or hangs outside the index for months with a broken form.

Below is a week-by-week plan after launch: what to check, what to set up and which decisions to make based on the first data.

Why launch is not the finish line

Launch is the start of operation: only after it does the site meet real visitors, search engine crawlers and ad traffic. Errors that did not exist on the test server show up exactly here.

What happens next

Yandex and Google crawlers start crawling, the first visitors go through the pages from different devices, and inquiries go to email and the CRM. Each of these flows needs to be checked separately.

What problems come up

Post-launch errors fall into two groups, and both occur even with experienced teams.

Technical

A robots.txt blocking indexing that was left over from the test version, redirects from the old site that were not carried over, a missing canonical and mixed content over HTTP.

Content

Placeholder texts, outdated prices, empty product pages, identical headings on different pages and photos without captions.

Week one

In the first days after launch, the main task is to make sure the site works and inquiries reach the managers. Promotion and advertising can wait until this basic level is covered.

Checking that everything works

Checking a website after launch starts with a manual pass through all templates: home page, section, product page, contacts, cart. Open each one on a phone and a computer, in two browsers.

Forms and inquiries

Send a test inquiry from every form, including pop-ups and callback requests, and trace the entire path to the manager.

Email

Emails from the website often end up in spam because SPF and DKIM records are not configured. Check the "Spam" folder and ask the developer to set up sending through an email service.

CRM

Make sure an inquiry creates a deal with the correct source and that UTM tags are passed to the record. Without this, in a month it will be unclear which channel brings in customers.

Week two

In the second week, you need to open the site to search engines and set up analytics. These are two steps without which it is impossible to evaluate either SEO or advertising.

Indexing

Indexing of a new website speeds up if you add it to Yandex Webmaster and Google Search Console, upload a sitemap and connect IndexNow: the protocol works in Yandex and Bing and reports new URLs immediately after publication. The first pages usually appear in search within 1-3 weeks.

Metrica and analytics

Setting up Yandex Metrica is not limited to installing the tag. Turn on Session Replay and the click map, and then define what counts as a result.

Goals

Form submission, a click on the phone number, a jump to a messenger, placing an order. Each goal should fire only on a real action, not when a window opens.

Events

Intermediate actions: scrolling to the prices, opening the calculator, watching a video. They show at which step visitors lose interest.

Week three

By the third week, the first behavioral data accumulates, and it is already enough to find obvious problems. There is too little of it for statistical conclusions, but gross errors are visible right away.

First data

Even 300-500 visits are enough to see pages where people leave en masse and forms that nobody fills in.

What to look at

The minimum set of reports at this stage:

• traffic sources and their share;
• entry and exit pages;
• goal conversion broken down by device;
• Session Replay recordings on key pages;
• search queries in Yandex Webmaster.

Bounces

A high bounce rate on mobile with a normal one on desktop almost always signals a layout problem. Typical loss areas are covered in the article on mobile website optimization.

Page depth

A depth of less than 1.5 pages on a services website indicates weak internal linking or a confusing menu: the person cannot find where to go next.

Week four

The fourth week is the time for the first fixes based on the collected data. Change one element at a time so you understand what exactly had an effect.

First fixes

Make a list of 5-10 problems, sort them by their impact on inquiries and start from the top. Anything that does not affect conversion or indexing moves to the next month.

What to fix

Fixes usually concern two areas.

Content

Add prices or a price range if they are missing, rewrite the first screen around the customer's main question, and put reviews and photos of your work next to the form.

Technical details

Reduce image weight, remove unnecessary scripts, check that Open Graph is correct for messengers and that a favicon is in place.

What you must check

What to check on a new website in any case: broken links, speed, the mobile version, SSL and backups. These points do not depend on the niche or the size of the project.

404 and broken links

Scan the site with a crawler and fix all links to non-existent pages. The 404 page should return the correct response code and lead to the catalog or the home page.

Speed

Core Web Vitals benchmarks: LCP under 2.5 s, INP under 200 ms, CLS under 0.1 for real users. Data in PageSpeed Insights will appear once enough visits have accumulated.

Mobile version

Go through the customer's path to an inquiry on an inexpensive smartphone over mobile internet, not over the office Wi-Fi.

SSL

The certificate should cover all subdomains and renew automatically. An expired certificate wipes out traffic within a day: browsers show a warning.

Backups

Daily backups of files and the database, storage on a separate server and at least one trial restore in the first month.

What to do about SEO

SEO promotion after launch starts with checking the keyword set, meta tags, internal linking and the sitemap. Basic SEO optimization speeds up indexing and brings the first rankings for low-frequency queries. If you have no team of your own, it makes sense to order SEO promotion right after launch, while the structure is fresh.

Keyword set

Check the structure against the keyword core: each query cluster should have its own page. If the core has not been collected, start with the guide on how to choose keywords for SEO.

Meta tags

A unique Title and Description for each page, without templated repetition of the company name at the beginning.

Internal links

Link services to articles and case studies, and catalog sections to popular product pages. No important page should be more than three clicks from the home page.

Sitemap

The sitemap is generated automatically, contains only indexable pages with a 200 code and is updated with every publication.

What to do about advertising

Advertising is worth launching after goals are set up and forms are checked, usually in week 2-3. Otherwise, the budget will go to traffic whose results cannot be measured.

When to launch

When inquiries are guaranteed to reach the managers and the goals in Metrica fire correctly. Search ads bring inquiries right away and cover the period while SEO is gaining momentum.

What to test

The first month of advertising is for testing hypotheses, not for scaling.

Budget

Set aside an amount sufficient for 30-50 clicks per hypothesis, and do not split it into a dozen campaigns at once.

Audiences

Compare 2-3 segments and keep the best one. How to set up an ad account is covered in detail in the article on setting up targeted advertising.

Website support

Website support means regular updates, backups, monitoring and content edits. Without it, in six months the site starts to slow down and lose rankings.

Who is responsible

Appoint one person in charge on the company's side and lock in a contractor with a clear response time: a critical error within a few hours, minor edits within 1-3 days. If a web studio built the site, it makes sense to leave support with them: a web studio's website usually states its maintenance terms.

What is included

Website maintenance under a contract usually includes:

1. updating the content management system and modules;
2. monitoring availability and SSL;
3. backups and restoration;
4. fixing errors and making minor improvements.

Updates

Install security updates right away, and major versions on a test copy first.

Edits

Texts, prices and banners are convenient to change yourself, while changes to templates and forms are better left to a developer.

Conclusion

What to do after a website launch fits into a short post-launch plan: a week for checking that everything works and that inquiries arrive, a week for indexing and Metrica, a week for the first data and a week for fixes. In parallel, keep SSL, backups, speed and the mobile version under control.

Website creation and development at epic name. include this month of support: building the website from scratch, checking it after launch and handing the project over to SEO promotion. Website creation for service businesses and website development with a catalog work the same way.

The price of creating and developing a website depends on its scope, but the first 30 days of support are already included in the estimate. If you want to order turnkey website development or order a website from a web studio with a clear launch plan, you can order a turnkey website after the brief. For an existing website, you can order SEO promotion with an audit. We work with companies from Moscow and the regions.