Product launch checklist: 60 tasks before, during and after

Launching a web product well comes down to about 60 small, checkable tasks spread across five moments: four to six weeks before (tracking, technical SEO and accounts), the final week (content, press and directories), launch day, the first week and the first month. Almost none of them is hard; the hard part is not forgetting any. This list puts them in order and gives each one a way to prove it is done.

How to use this checklist

Every task is written so you can answer yes or no. "Improve SEO" cannot be ticked; "sitemap.xml submitted in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools" can. You can tick the boxes on this page and download each block to paste into your task manager.

1. Start with the 4 to 6 week block: almost everything in it needs time to take effect (indexing, domain verification, analytics data).
2. Give every task a date, not just an owner. If you work alone, the date is the only thing that protects you from "I'll get to it".
3. Do not launch with critical tasks still open (they are in the table near the end). The rest can wait until the first week.

Platform rules quoted here are the ones in force according to each platform's documentation as of October 2026. They change often: before every launch, open the link and check they still hold.

4 to 6 weeks before: tracking, technical SEO and accounts

This is the block people forget because nobody sees it. If your analytics does not record conversions on launch day, you lose the one day of concentrated traffic that could tell you which channel works. And if Google has not crawled your site yet, nobody searching for your name will find it.

Why so much technical detail

Google accepts sitemaps through the Search Console report, its API or a Sitemap: line in robots.txt, and each file is capped at 50,000 URLs or 50MB uncompressed, according to its sitemap guide. The same guide says it ignores <priority> and <changefreq>: do not waste time tuning them, keep <lastmod> honest instead. And remember that robots.txt does not hide pages: Google's robots.txt introduction says so in as many words and points you to noindex or password protection.

Two classic mistakes in this block: one-way hreflang (Google ignores the tags unless both pages point to each other, and every version must also list itself) and a missing og:image, which means your link gets shared without a picture on the very day it is shared most. The Open Graph protocol defines four required properties: og:title, og:type, og:image and og:url. For your company entity, Google recommends putting Organization markup on the home page or the about page, with sameAs pointing to your profiles.

On consent: Google describes two modes in its Consent Mode documentation. In basic mode, tags do not load until the visitor interacts with the banner; in advanced mode they load with values set to denied and send cookieless pings. Pick one deliberately and test it with a clean profile, not the browser that accepted everything months ago.

The final week: content, GEO, press and directories

The final week prepares what people, journalists and AI assistants will read. An AI search engine can only quote your prices if they are in the HTML, and a journalist only mentions you if they can find your logo and a description without having to email you.

llms.txt is a proposed standard: a Markdown file at the root with an H1, a summary and sections of curated links. It does not replace the sitemap; it summarises. On crawlers, OpenAI explains on its bots page that sites opted out of OAI-SearchBot are not shown in ChatGPT search answers, and that GPTBot is a separate agent used for training: you can allow one and block the other. Perplexity draws the same line between PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User.

With UTMs, the classic mistake is mixed casing: according to Google Analytics help, values are case sensitive, so utm_source=LinkedIn and utm_source=linkedin show up as two different sources. Settle the convention before you build the first link.

Launch day: publish, reply and watch

Launch day is not for creating anything: everything that goes out that day is already written. Your job is to be present in the conversations and make sure nothing breaks. Product Hunt's launch preparation guide, as of October 2026, says the homepage runs on a 24-hour cycle in Pacific Time, lets you schedule up to a month ahead and recommends a maker first comment that asks for feedback, not upvotes.

Show HN has its own rules: according to its guidelines, it is for something people can try, ideally without sign-ups or emails, and it excludes sign-up pages, landing pages and newsletters. If all you have is a waitlist, it is not your Show HN moment yet.

The first week: directories, fixes and data

The first week turns the spike into something that lasts. Directories go out in stages so you are not swamped with replies, what people asked moves onto the site, and the data gets cleaned while you still remember what you posted and where. Wait a month and you will not know where that Tuesday spike came from.

URL Inspection lets you request indexing for a page, but Search Console help warns there is a daily limit on requests and that requesting does not guarantee the page will be indexed. Use it for your five or ten key pages, not all of them. For Bing and other engines there is IndexNow, a change-notification protocol currently supported by Microsoft Bing, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yandex and Yep, according to its site.

To pick and stage directories, see the guide to Product Hunt and launch directories, with each one's requirements.

The first month and beyond: consolidate and decide

After a month you have enough data to decide which channel to double down on and which to drop. It is also when Search Console starts giving you useful reports. The typical mistake here is launching paid campaigns to "get the momentum back", with no spending cap and in a channel that has not proven it converts.

Critical tasks: what happens if you forget them

Not every task weighs the same. These eight are the ones that cannot be fixed afterwards if they fail: launch-day traffic does not come back.

The most common mistakes

• Testing in your own browser. You already accepted the cookies and you are logged in: you are seeing a site nobody else sees. Use a private window and someone else's phone.
• Launching everywhere on the same day. Product Hunt, Show HN, ten directories and five networks at once is impossible to keep up with. Stagger them.
• Asking for upvotes. Product Hunt explicitly asks the first comment to request feedback; chasing votes wears out your goodwill with people and with the platform.
• Treating launch as a day. More than half of this list happens before or after. Launch day is just the visible part.
• Not writing anything down. Without a note of what you posted, where and when, a month later you cannot compare channels.

If you need the bigger picture first, start with how to launch a web project, and for the technical block, SEO and GEO for a new project.

A 60-task list solves the what, but not the when or the status of each task; that is the problem of not knowing what to do each day of a launch. The website part can be checked automatically with the launch readiness check.