The Post-Redesign Checklist: 12 Things That Break After a Website Launch

Redesigns break things

Every website redesign ships with unintended side effects. Pages that worked before now return 404s. Images that loaded fast are now three times larger. Meta descriptions that ranked well got overwritten with placeholder text.

This is normal. The problem isn’t that things break. The problem is when nobody checks.

12 things to verify after every redesign

1. Broken internal links: Pages moved but old links still point to the original URLs.
2. Missing page titles: New templates sometimes omit the <title> tag or use a generic default.
3. Duplicate meta descriptions: Template systems often repeat the same description across pages.
4. Missing alt text on images: New image components may skip the alt attribute.
5. Heading hierarchy gaps: Jumping from H1 to H4 confuses screen readers and search engines.
6. Slow page load times: New design assets (fonts, images, scripts) add weight.
7. Missing Open Graph tags: Social sharing previews break without og:title and og:image.
8. Form accessibility: New form designs may lack labels, ARIA attributes, or keyboard navigation.
9. Mixed content warnings: HTTPS pages loading HTTP resources trigger browser warnings.
10. Missing structured data: Schema markup from the old site may not carry over.
11. Viewport issues on mobile: New layouts may cause horizontal scrolling on small screens.
12. Broken XML sitemap: Old URLs in the sitemap return errors after the redesign.

How to catch these

Run a full site audit immediately after launch. SiteCurl checks for all 12 of these across up to 50 pages per scan. Set up weekly scans to catch regressions that appear after launch day.

For agencies

If you’re delivering redesigns to clients, a post-launch audit report gives you documentation that the work was done right. It also catches issues before the client notices them.