Website Launch Checklist for Singapore SMEs (2027)

A website launch is not the day the designer sends you a link. It is the day a stranger in Punggol can find you, trust you and send you a WhatsApp in under a minute, without anything breaking and without you collecting personal data you have no right to.

This checklist is written for Singapore business owners, not developers. Every item is something you can check yourself, on your own phone, or ask your web team to show you. Tick through it before launch day, then come back to the last section 30 days later.

If you are still choosing who builds the site, the first section matters most. If the site is already built, start at "Content & trust" and work down.

1. Before you brief anyone

Most launch problems are briefing problems that surface late. Settle these before a single page is designed.

• ▸ One main goal is written down. "Get WhatsApp enquiries for aircon servicing in the east" beats "look professional". Every page decision flows from it.
• ▸ You know what counts as a lead. A form submission, a WhatsApp tap, a call, a booking request. Pick one primary action and at most one backup.
• ▸ The page list is agreed. Home, services (one page per main service if you want to rank for each), about, contact, privacy notice. Add area or industry pages only if you have genuinely different content for each.
• ▸ One content owner is named. Someone on your side who writes or approves copy, supplies photos and signs off. Sites stall for weeks waiting on "the boss will review".
• ▸ Existing assets are collected. Logo files, real photos, testimonials you have permission to use, your Google Business Profile link, social handles.
• ▸ You know who maintains it after launch. Who updates prices, holiday hours and staff photos? If the answer is "the agency", know how and how fast.
• ▸ If replacing an old site, the old page addresses are listed. Pages that already get Google traffic need to point to their new equivalents, or you lose that traffic.

2. Content & trust

Singapore customers are cautious with businesses they find online, and with good reason given how common scams are. Your site has seconds to prove you are real.

• ▸ The UEN shown is correct. Customers and procurement teams do look it up. Ask your corporate secretary if your entity type has any additional disclosure requirements for documents and correspondence.
• ▸ The WhatsApp button opens the right number. Test it on an iPhone and an Android phone. Make sure the pre-filled message tells you which page they came from.
• ▸ Every testimonial is genuine and permitted. The CCCS treats fake reviews as an unfair practice; our Google Business Profile guide covers the rules on reviews in more detail.
• ▸ No placeholder text or "lorem ipsum" anywhere, including image descriptions and the footer copyright year.
• ▸ Your claims are ones you can back up. "Singapore's No. 1" needs proof. "Serving HDB and condo homes since 2018" does not.

3. Singapore legal basics

This is not legal advice, and requirements change. Verify with the regulator's own pages and, if in doubt, a lawyer. But these are the items SMEs most often miss.

PDPA: forms and privacy notice

Under the PDPA, organisations must obtain consent and notify people of the purposes when collecting personal data. A contact form asking for name, mobile and address collects personal data. The PDPC's Guide to Notification shows good practice, including short notices at the point of collection.

• ▸ Every form says, in a line, what you will do with the details ("We'll use your details to reply to your enquiry and arrange a quote"), with a link to your full privacy notice.
• ▸ The form only asks for what you need. NRIC numbers almost never belong on an enquiry form.
• ▸ A privacy notice page exists and explains what you collect, why, who you share it with (for example, your booking or email provider) and how to contact you about it.
• ▸ A data protection officer is designated and contactable. The PDPC says every organisation must designate at least one DPO and make their business contact information available to the public; ACRA-registered entities can register DPO details through BizFile+. See the PDPC's DPO page.
• ▸ Form submissions go somewhere secure, not to a shared personal Gmail that ex-staff can still access.

Do Not Call: if you will market by phone or SMS

The PDPC's Do Not Call provisions generally prohibit sending marketing calls, SMS or faxes to Singapore numbers listed on the DNC Registry, unless you have clear and unambiguous consent from the person.

• ▸ Replying to an enquiry is not the issue; promotions later are. If you want to send leads offers by SMS or call them about new packages, add a separate, unticked consent checkbox for that.
• ▸ You can show when and how each person consented. Your form tool should keep a record.
• ▸ Your team knows the difference between answering a customer and marketing to them.

Cookies and tracking

Analytics and ad tools use cookies, and some of what they collect can be personal data. The PDPC's Advisory Guidelines on Selected Topics include a chapter on online activities; read it with your web team.

• ▸ Your privacy notice says what analytics and advertising tools the site uses and why.
• ▸ If you sell to customers in the EU or UK, expect stricter cookie consent rules than Singapore's, and plan a proper consent banner.

4. SEO & AI visibility basics

You do not need an SEO campaign to launch. You do need the basics in place so Google, and the AI assistants customers increasingly ask, can understand who you are.

• ▸ Every page has its own title and description that says what the page is and where you serve. "Aircon Servicing in Tampines & Bedok | Company Name", not "Home". Preview how they look with our free Google SERP preview tool.
• ▸ One clear main heading per page, using words customers actually search.
• ▸ The site is not blocked from search engines. Staging sites are often hidden from Google on purpose, and that setting sometimes survives launch. Ask your developer to confirm it is off.
• ▸ Google Search Console is set up and verified under an account your business owns, with the sitemap submitted.
• ▸ Your Google Business Profile links to the new site, and the name, address and phone match exactly.
• ▸ Business-level structured data is in place. Ask your web team to confirm the site tells search engines your business name, logo, contact details, address or service area and opening hours in a machine-readable way. You do not need to understand how, only that it is done and matches your profile.
• ▸ Your services, areas and prices (or price drivers) are written in plain text, not only inside images or PDFs. AI assistants and search engines read text.

If your site has been live for a while and still does not appear, our guide on why your website is not showing on Google walks through the usual causes. For how ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI answers decide which businesses to mention, see AI visibility.

5. Speed & mobile

Smartphone ownership among Singapore residents reached 97% in 2022, according to IMDA's Singapore Digital Society Report 2023. For most consumer businesses, the phone is where the site gets judged. Check your own analytics after launch for your real split, but design and test for mobile first.

• ▸ Open the site on your own phone on mobile data, not office Wi-Fi. Does the first screen appear quickly?
• ▸ The main action is visible without scrolling on a small phone.
• ▸ Text is readable without zooming, and buttons are big enough for a thumb.
• ▸ Nothing pops up and covers the page before the visitor has read anything.
• ▸ Run Google's free PageSpeed Insights on the home page and your main service page. You are not chasing a perfect score; you are looking for anything flagged as poor on mobile.
• ▸ Images are not huge. A common cause of slow SME sites is uncompressed photos straight off a camera.
• ▸ Test on at least one older phone. Your customers are not all on the latest iPhone.

6. Tracking

If you cannot see where enquiries come from, you cannot tell whether the website, Google Ads or Instagram is paying for itself.

• ▸ Google Analytics 4 is installed and owned by your business's Google account, with your agency added as a user, not the other way round.
• ▸ Key actions are tracked as conversions: form submissions, WhatsApp taps, phone taps, booking requests. Ask to see a test enquiry appear in the reports.
• ▸ Test enquiries are not counted as real ones once you go live.
• ▸ If you run ads, the ad platforms receive the same conversions. Otherwise Google Ads and Meta optimise blind.
• ▸ Someone looks at the numbers monthly. Agree on three: visits, enquiries and enquiry rate.

7. Security & ownership

One of the most painful situations for an owner is being locked out of their own domain because a former freelancer registered it in their own name.

• ▸ The domain is registered in your company's name, under an account you control, with auto-renew on and a company email (not a personal one) as the contact.
• ▸ If you use a .sg or .com.sg domain, note that SGNIC, the .sg registry, requires identity verification for new .sg domains through its VerifiedID@SG process. Check current rules on sgnic.sg or with your registrar, and complete verification promptly so the domain is not suspended.
• ▸ You have the logins for the domain registrar, hosting, website editor, Search Console, GA4 and Google Business Profile, stored in a password manager.
• ▸ The site loads with the padlock (HTTPS) on every page, and the non-secure version redirects to it.
• ▸ Backups run automatically and someone has confirmed a backup can actually be restored.
• ▸ Business email still works after the switch. Changing where a domain points can break email if done carelessly. Send and receive a test before and after.
• ▸ Admin accounts use strong passwords and two-factor login, and ex-staff are removed.
• ▸ You know who fixes things if the site goes down, and how quickly.

8. Launch day

Pick a quiet weekday morning, not the eve of a public holiday or the day your Chinese New Year promotion starts.

• ▸ Submit a real enquiry through every form and confirm it arrives, and that the customer gets an acknowledgement.
• ▸ Tap every WhatsApp and phone button on mobile.
• ▸ Click every menu link and footer link. Look for pages that show "not found".
• ▸ Check old page addresses from your previous site now land on the right new pages.
• ▸ Confirm the site appears without "www" and with it, and both end up at the same address.
• ▸ Request indexing of your home page in Search Console.
• ▸ Update your links everywhere: Google Business Profile, Instagram and Facebook bios, WhatsApp Business profile, email signatures, Carousell or Shopee shop pages, printed QR codes.
• ▸ Tell your team what changed and where enquiries now arrive.

9. The first 30 days after launch

Launch is the start of the useful feedback, not the end of the project.

• ▸ Week 1: Check Search Console for errors and confirm Google has started indexing pages. Watch for enquiries from new sources.
• ▸ Week 1: Ask three customers or friends who have never seen the site to find your price, book or message you, on their own phones. Watch, do not help.
• ▸ Week 2: Fix whatever confused them. It is usually wording, not design.
• ▸ Week 2: Ask recent happy customers for a Google review and link the reviews from the site.
• ▸ Week 3: Review GA4. Which pages get visits but no enquiries? That is where to improve first.
• ▸ Week 4: Compare enquiries with the same month last year, or with your old site, allowing for seasonality around festive periods and school holidays.
• ▸ Week 4: Decide what to add next: a service page for an area you want to rank in, an FAQ from questions customers keep asking, or a dedicated landing page for ads.

If you plan to run paid ads, send that traffic to a focused page built around one offer rather than your home page. Our landing page design service explains how that differs from a full website.

Common mistakes we see

• ▸The designer owns the domain. Fixable, but slow and sometimes expensive. Settle it at the start.
• ▸Forms that email nobody. The form looks fine; submissions go to an inbox no one checks. Test it on launch day and again a week later.
• ▸No privacy notice next to a form that collects names and phone numbers.
• ▸Analytics installed but no conversions set up, so three months later nobody can say what worked.
• ▸Launching on desktop review alone. The owner approves it on a laptop; customers see it on a phone.
• ▸Treating launch as finished. Good sites improve monthly from what customers actually do.

Want a second pair of eyes?

If you are planning a new site, or you have one about to go live and want someone to run through this list with you, have a look at our website design service. Or simply send us a WhatsApp via our contact page: tell us what the site needs to do, and we will tell you honestly what matters before launch and what can wait.