Rebrand launch checklist: brand rollout and website go-live, phase by phase

How to use this checklist

Work through it in order. Each phase ends with items that have a clear "done when", so you know when you can move on. If you're launching a new website without changing the brand, skip the brand rollout items; the rest still applies.

The order matters more than any single item. Approve the brand files before you rebuild the touchpoints, tell your team before you tell customers, and make the website live before the announcement sends people to it.

Decide what changes on launch day and what can wait

A rebrand doesn't have to reach every touchpoint on the same morning. Split the work into two lists:

• Launch day: what a customer is likely to see in the first week. The website, social profiles, email signatures, your Google Business Profile and the documents you send most, such as proposals, quotes and invoices.
• Rollout: what can follow on a dated schedule. Printed stock, signage, packaging, vehicles and older templates.

Give every item one owner and a date. An item without an owner is the one still carrying the old logo six months later.

Weeks before: the brand

Final files and guidelines

• Final logo files in vector and raster formats, light and dark versions, and a mark that still reads at favicon size.
• Color values for screen and print, the typefaces, and font licenses that cover both web and desktop use.
• Brand guidelines short enough that people actually open them, plus the templates your team uses most.
• One shared folder with the approved files. Archive the old ones so nobody grabs them by mistake.

Check the new name before you announce it

If the name changes, confirm you can use it in each market before anything goes public. WIPO's Global Brand Database searches international trademarks under the Madrid System and marks from participating national offices, but WIPO itself suggests also searching national and regional registers. Have a qualified trademark lawyer review the results, and secure the domain and social handles at the same time.

If you haven't chosen who will run the rebrand yet, our guide on how to choose a rebranding agency in Colombia covers what each proposal should deliver and how to register a new name with the SIC.

Inventory every touchpoint

List every place the brand appears, with what changes, who changes it and when:

• Website, domains and email addresses
• Social profiles: display name, handle, profile image, banner, bio and links
• Email signatures and autoresponders
• Documents and templates: proposals, quotes, invoices, contracts, slide decks
• Google Business Profile and other directory listings
• App store listings, if you have an app
• Ad accounts, marketplaces and payment pages
• Signage, packaging, uniforms and vehicles, if any

Google Business Profile has its own name rules

Google's Business Profile guidelines say "Your name should reflect your business's real-world name," meaning the name used consistently on your storefront, website and stationery. They also limit what counts as a rebrand. You can edit the name on the existing profile if the proper nouns and services in the name stay the same and the business category doesn't change, or if a business with several locations changes its name. Otherwise Google treats it as a new business: you mark the old profile as closed and create a new one.

Read that section before you touch the profile. Change the website and signage first, since the guidelines tie the profile name to what customers see there.

Weeks before: the website

Content, legal pages and forms

• No placeholder text, old names or old logos anywhere, including page titles, image alt text and downloadable PDFs.
• Privacy policy, terms and cookie notice updated with the new name and matching what the site actually collects.
• Every form submitted end to end: the message reaches the right inbox or CRM, the confirmation email uses the new brand, and nothing lands in spam.

Analytics and consent

Install analytics and conversion events on staging and confirm the events arrive. If the site uses a consent banner, check that tags fire only after consent where consent is required.

Accessibility against WCAG 2.2

WCAG 2.2 is a W3C Recommendation. It defines three conformance levels (A, AA and AAA); aim for at least AA. A pre-launch pass should cover:

• Text alternatives for images (1.1.1)
• Text contrast of at least 4.5:1, or 3:1 for large text (1.4.3)
• Everything usable by keyboard, with visible focus that sticky headers don't hide (2.1.1, 2.4.7, 2.4.11)
• Pointer targets of at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels, with the listed exceptions (2.5.8)
• Labels or instructions on form fields (3.3.2) and the page language declared (3.1.1)

A rebrand is where contrast usually breaks. Check the new palette against 1.4.3 while the colors can still change, not after the site is built.

Performance

Google's Core Web Vitals thresholds are LCP within 2.5 seconds, INP of 200 milliseconds or less and CLS of 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads. A new site has no real-user data yet: Search Console's Core Web Vitals report uses Chrome UX Report field data and leaves out URLs without enough of it. Test your key templates with PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse before launch.

A real 404 page

Build a 404 page that helps people find their way, and check that it returns a 404 status code. Google's documentation on HTTP errors says a 2xx response with an empty page or an error message shows up in Search Console as a soft 404.

Favicon, site name and share images

• Favicon. Google's favicon guidelines ask for a square icon, recommend more than 48x48 pixels, and require both the home page and the icon file to be crawlable. Keep the icon's URL stable.
• Site name. Add WebSite structured data with the new name to the home page, following Google's site name documentation. Google also reads og:site_name, the title and headings, so make them all say the same thing.
• Share images. The Open Graph protocol requires og:title, og:type, og:image and og:url on every page, and says a page with og:image should also set og:image:alt. Paste a few links into a private message to check the preview.

If URLs or the domain change

A new name often means a new domain. That's a migration, with its own URL inventory, permanent redirects and Search Console steps, and it deserves its own plan and test. See website migration.

Accounts, backups and ownership

The domain registrar, DNS, hosting, CMS, analytics, Search Console, Business Profile and social accounts should belong to the company, not to someone's personal login. A Search Console property needs at least one verified owner, and Google's permissions page says that if the only verified owner leaves your team, you should verify ownership again. Add a second owner now. Back up the old site and the new one before launch, and confirm you can restore them.

Launch week

1. Tell your team first. Explain the change, share the new signatures and templates, and give customer-facing staff a short answer to "did you change your name?"
2. Freeze content. Only launch fixes go in.
3. Run the final pass on staging: links, forms, mobile layouts and the 404 page.
4. Schedule the external announcement for after the site is confirmed live, not for the minute you switch DNS.

Launch day, in order

1. Publish the site or switch DNS.
2. Remove staging blocks. Google's noindex documentation explains that when robots.txt blocks a page, the crawler never sees its noindex rule. Check the live HTML for noindex, the response headers for X-Robots-Tag, and robots.txt itself.
3. Smoke-test the home page, key pages, every form and the 404 status.
4. In Search Console, verify the property and submit the XML sitemap. You need owner permissions to submit through the Sitemaps report, and Google's sitemap guide calls submission "merely a hint," so the goal today is a Success status, not instant indexing.
5. Run the home page and key pages through URL Inspection: run the live test, then request indexing. Requests have a daily quota and don't guarantee indexing.
6. Update social profiles, email signatures and the Business Profile.
7. Announce.

The checklist

The first 30 days

• Indexing. Check that your key pages are indexed and inspect any that aren't.
• Name and favicon in results. Google says each can take several days to several weeks to update. If the old name still shows after that, check that the WebSite markup, the title and the home page text agree.
• Brand searches. In Search Console's Performance report, watch clicks and impressions for both the old name and the new one.
• Leads. Compare inquiries with the weeks before launch, and submit every form again after the first week.
• 404s. Fix broken internal links and restore or replace any missing page that people still look for.
• Core Web Vitals. Open the report once real-user data appears.
• Rollout. Work through the second-wave list on its dates and retire old printed stock.
• Confusion. Ask the team what customers keep asking about the change, and answer it on the site.

How Dardo can help

Dardo's rebranding work ends with a rollout stage: website changes, a migration plan, a launch checklist and a handover to your team. If the brand stays and only the site is new, see web design. Either way, tell us what you're launching.