Most website launches in Namibia go wrong in the same few places. The domain is registered in a developer's personal account. The contact number on the site rings a phone nobody carries. The site looks correct on the laptop it was built on and falls apart on the phone the customer is actually holding.
This checklist is the one we run before any Studio project goes live. Work through it in order. Anything you cannot tick is a launch blocker, not a nice to have.
Ownership and access
- The domain is registered in the business name, in an account the business controls, not the developer's personal account.
- You hold the login for the domain registrar and can prove it by logging in yourself, today.
- You hold the login for the hosting or deployment platform.
- The business email account that receives form submissions belongs to the business, not to a staff member who may leave.
- Domain auto-renew is switched on and the card on file is current.
The things customers touch
- Every phone number on the site is dialled once, from a phone, and answered by a person who knows the business.
- Every email address on the site receives a test message and someone replies to it.
- The WhatsApp link opens the correct number with a sensible prefilled message.
- Physical address matches what appears on Google Maps, written street, suburb, town.
- Trading hours are correct, including how you handle public holidays.
The technical floor
- The site loads on a phone on mobile data, not only on office wifi.
- Every page has a unique title and description.
- The site has a favicon and a social sharing image, so a WhatsApp link preview does not look broken.
- HTTPS is active and the http version redirects to it.
- A 404 page exists, is styled, and offers a route back into the site.
- The sitemap is submitted to Google Search Console.
If you tick nothing else, tick domain ownership. Recovering a domain from a former developer is the single most expensive avoidable problem in Namibian small business web work.
The week after
Launch day is not the end of the work. In the first week, watch what people actually do. Check that enquiries are arriving. Check that they are arriving in a form you can act on. Check that the phone number is being used.
If nothing arrives in the first week, the problem is almost never the design. It is usually that nobody knows the site exists yet, or that the site does not say clearly enough what the business does.
