A Nonprofit Website Launch Checklist
A new website launch tends to get all the design attention and none of the operational attention, right up until the week it goes live and someone asks a question nobody thought to answer. Here's what's worth confirming before you flip the switch.
Donation receipts
Test an actual donation, start to finish, on the live payment processor, not just a preview mode. Confirm the receipt email arrives, confirm it has your organization's correct legal name and tax information on it, and confirm it's something you'd be comfortable a donor forwarding to their accountant. This is the single most consequential email your organization sends, and it's easy to launch a site without ever having actually seen it.
Old links and redirects
List out the pages that existed on your old site that have any external visibility, anything indexed by Google, anything linked from an old email or a partner's website. Decide where each one should redirect to on the new site. A visitor landing on a "page not found" screen because a link they had saved no longer works is a bad first impression, and it's avoidable with a short list made in advance.
Who has access, and to what
Before launch is the right moment to actually look at who has login access to the site and what they can do with it. A volunteer who helped with content two years ago and never had their access removed is a real, common gap. Match the current list of people with access against the current list of people who should have it.
Mobile, actually on a phone
Not a browser window resized to look like a phone, an actual phone. Check that the donate button is reachable without scrolling past everything else, that event registration works on a small screen, and that any embedded forms don't get cut off. A meaningful share of donors and event registrants will be on mobile, and a site that only got tested on a desktop monitor tends to have surprises here.
Search visibility
Confirm the new site has a sitemap, confirm your key pages aren't accidentally marked "noindex" from a staging configuration that never got turned off, and search for your organization's name once the site is live to see what actually shows up. A surprising number of launched sites are quietly telling search engines not to index them, left over from testing.
The people who need to know
Board members, major donors, and anyone who regularly sends people to your website should get a short heads-up that the site is changing, with a note about anything that's moving, like a donation page URL. It costs one email and prevents "is your website broken?" messages in the days after launch.
Have a specific question about your nonprofit's site?
Tell us what you're working with and we'll talk through what would actually help.