Squarespace website launch checklist: signed out

A signed-in owner gets past things a visitor cannot. Squarespace can put a password on a whole site while it is being built, and an editor working on the site can still open the pages behind that screen. A page you are still working on can look finished in the preview. When you open the public address from your own browser, your signed-in session can hide the gap, so the failure never shows up for you. A visitor arrives with none of that. They see the password screen, or the page as it was last published. The editor never shows that difference, so the check has to happen outside it.

• Open the public address in a private window, signed out. Does a password screen appear?
• Open the home page, one service page and the contact page on a phone. Does each load?
• Type the domain with and without the www prefix. Do both show the same page?
• Send the contact form from a private window. Does a confirmation appear, and does the message reach your inbox?
• Write down the step where each check fails, and fix the first one before the rest.

A visitor who meets a password screen never sees the rest of the site, so no other check counts until that screen is gone. The same goes for the domain. Most owners test the navigation, the forms and the prices first, because those are the parts they built. A stranger does not care about them yet. They only care whether the address opens to something they recognize. Start the list at the address, then move inward to the page, the menu and the form. Each step assumes the one before it passed.

You build the page at desktop width, so the layout you chose there is the one you judge. A visitor on a phone may see a different order, or a button pushed below a block. Open the site on a phone and scroll slowly. Note any block that is blank, cut off or pushed down below an image. Then read the label on each button, since a label that fits in the editor can wrap or clip on a narrow screen.

Check the forms the same way. Send the contact form from a private window and wait for the confirmation. A success line on screen tells you the page responded. It does not tell you a message reached an inbox, so check those as two separate steps. Ask someone outside the team to send one, too, and note whether they had to retype a field the form dropped when they changed device.

Two changes after launch can bring a broken first screen back: a site password switched on again while you edit, and a new page added to the navigation that a visitor already reaches. Neither one looks like a problem from inside the editor. Keep the signed-out list the same and run it after the announcement and after each of those changes. A stop that moves further down the page is progress, even when the visitor still does not finish. Record the step each time, so the next run can be compared with the one before it.

Renewing a domain, moving it to another registrar or adding a page can change what a visitor reaches on the first load. After each change, run the same signed-out visitors through the home page and the contact step, then compare how far each one got with the last run. Keep the list the same between runs, so the only difference is the change you made.