Launching a new site is exciting enough that it's easy to skip a few boring but important steps. Here are the ten we'd check before any St. Johns County business goes live.

1. Mobile-first design

Design and test for a phone screen first, then confirm it holds up on desktop — not the other way around.

2. Fast load time

Test your homepage and top service pages with a free tool like Google PageSpeed Insights before launch, not after you notice traffic dropping.

3. Your service area named clearly

State plainly, in real page content, which towns and neighborhoods you serve — Ponte Vedra, Nocatee, St. Augustine, or wherever applies specifically to your business.

4. A real, working contact or lead form

Submit a test entry yourself before launch and confirm it actually reaches the right inbox. A silently broken form can go unnoticed for months.

5. Click-to-call phone number

On mobile, your phone number should be tappable, not just displayed as plain text a visitor has to copy manually.

6. SEO basics done at launch

Title tags, meta descriptions, and basic schema markup should be in place from day one, not treated as a follow-up project.

7. Google Business Profile linked and matching

Your website and your Google listing should show identical business name, address, and phone number, with a link between the two.

8. Basic security in place

An active SSL certificate (the padlock in the address bar) is table stakes at this point — without it, browsers actively warn visitors your site isn't secure.

9. Analytics installed from day one

You can't improve what you can't measure. Install analytics before launch so you have real baseline data from the very first visitor, not a gap you'll wish you'd filled later.

10. A plan for who updates it after launch

Decide before launch whether that's you, your team, or an ongoing arrangement with whoever built it — so the site doesn't quietly go stale six months in.