Resources / The 30-point site checklist
The 30-point site checklist
Everything we check before a website goes live, including the boring files nobody prompts an AI for.
By Raunak Singh Bhogal. Published 18 September 2026, updated 26 September 2026.
The short version
AI can build a website in an afternoon. Whether it is any good was decided before the tool was opened. These are the documents and checks we run before any site goes live, including our own.
One sentence
What must a visitor do on this site? Message you, buy, book, download. If you cannot write it in one sentence, the AI will guess, and it guesses wrong.
Write it before you open any tool.
The page list
Every page, and the one job each page has. No job, no page. This is the prompt that stops a ten-page site nobody needed.
Most small sites need five pages.
The words first
Write the real copy before the design. AI fills gaps with confident nonsense about your own business, and you will not notice until a client does.
Real words. Never lorem ipsum.
Brand tokens
Your colours as hex codes, your typefaces by name, your logo as a file. Hand these over and every page looks like one brand, not five moods.
Three colours, two typefaces, one logo.
The boring files
404 page, favicon, page titles, share image, sitemap, privacy page. Nobody prompts for these. Their absence is how people spot a vibe coded site.
We count 30 of these. Comment for the list.
Then build
With those five in hand, vibe coding works. We built our own site this way: the documents first, the code second, a checklist last.
thepicantestudio.com is the proof.
Then check
Open it on a real phone. Paste the link into WhatsApp and LinkedIn and look at the preview. Submit your own form. Then launch.
A site is finished when a stranger can use it.
Before you build
- One sentence: what a visitor must do
- A page list with one job per page
- Real copy written before design
- Colours as hex, typefaces by name, logo files
- Licensed images, or your own
- Domain and a professional email
Every page
- One clear call to action above the fold
- Works at phone width, tested on a real phone
- Text contrast you can read in sunlight
- Visible keyboard focus
- Alt text on every image
- Respects reduced-motion settings
States nobody prompts for
- Custom 404 page
- Form error messages next to the field
- A success state after the form
- Loading states for anything slow
- Spam protection on forms
- A sticky or easy-to-reach contact on mobile
Findability
- Unique title on every page
- Meta description on every page
- Share image for link previews
- Favicon set, including phone icons
- robots.txt and sitemap.xml
- Canonical URLs and Search Console verified
Trust and speed
- Privacy page that says what you collect
- A real contact address
- Images compressed, WebP where possible
- Fonts self-hosted, lazy loading on media
- www redirects to one address, HTTPS everywhere
- Link preview checked on WhatsApp and LinkedIn
What you get
- Six things to write down before you build
- The states and files AI never adds on its own
- Findability, trust and speed checks for launch day
Free. PDF.
Tell us what you're launching.
Send the brief, the product or just the problem. We reply with an approach and a quote.