Pick up your phone, the ordinary one, and switch off Wi-Fi. Open your website on mobile data. Fill in the contact form and press send. Then tap the WhatsApp button and see whose chat opens.
If the enquiry reached the right inbox and the chat opened to your business number, well done. You’ve just passed two of the 84 checks below, and they’re two of the most expensive ones to fail.
Most Nigerian websites get judged on launch day by how they look. The problems that cost money don’t show up on launch day. A form that sends enquiries nowhere. A WhatsApp button pointing at the developer’s test number. A key page still hidden from Google because nobody switched off the staging setting. Analytics that has never recorded a single visit. Any one of these can run for months before anybody notices, and every one of those months is paid for in enquiries that never arrived.
Print this list, or go through it with whoever built your site. It works for new sites and rebuilds, and it’s worth running again on a site you haven’t checked in a while, because plenty of these items break over time without anyone noticing. Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto shows pilots and surgeons relying on simple checklists, because experts skip steps under pressure. Website launches are no different.
Sections: Speed on Nigerian mobile connections · Trust and credibility · Conversion · WhatsApp · Payments and checkout · Search and AI visibility · Measurement · Data protection and consent · Security and reliability · Accessibility and usability · Launch week
Speed on Nigerian Mobile Connections
Most of your visitors will arrive on a phone, often on a patchy mobile connection, paying for every megabyte. A slow page costs them data as well as patience, and they won’t wait around to find out what you sell.
- Test on a real mid-range Android phone over mobile data, not only on office Wi-Fi
- Largest image on the first screen compressed and served in a modern format (WebP or AVIF)
- Images sized for their display size, not uploaded at camera resolution
- Images below the first screen lazy-loaded
- Page caching enabled, plus a CDN if your audience is spread out
- Unused plugins deactivated and removed, not just switched off
- Fonts limited to the weights you actually use
- Autoplay video removed from the homepage, or replaced with a poster image
- Core Web Vitals checked in Google PageSpeed Insights for mobile, and fixed where failing
- Third-party scripts (chat widgets, pixels, embeds) audited, and each one justified
Trust and Credibility
Nigerian buyers have learnt the hard way that a bad purchase is hard to undo. Your site has to lower that risk before it asks for anything, and these are the signals people look for.
- Business name, and a real address or clearly stated service area, visible
- Phone number and WhatsApp contact that are actually answered
- Real photographs of your team, premises or work, not only stock images
- Reviews or testimonials that are verifiable, with names where permission allows
- At least one case study or worked example with real numbers
- Pricing, or a clear starting price, published where your category allows it
- Registered business name or CAC number shown where it adds credibility
- Clear refund, cancellation or guarantee terms, if you offer them
- No placeholder text anywhere: search the whole site for lorem ipsum, [X], TBD and example.com
- About page that names real people
Conversion
Traffic is only worth paying for if the site turns it into enquiries. This is where most of that money leaks.
- Every page answers what you do, who it’s for and what to do next within the first screen
- One primary call to action per page
- Forms ask only for what you need at that stage
- Every form tested end to end: submitted, received, and confirmation shown
- Thank-you page or confirmation message tells people what happens next and when
- Response time to new enquiries agreed internally before launch
- Enquiries routed to a named person, not a shared inbox nobody owns
- Mobile tap targets large enough to use with a thumb
- Ad campaigns send traffic to dedicated landing pages, not the homepage
For a lot of Nigerian buyers, WhatsApp is where the real conversation happens before they buy. Treat the button like a shop door, because to the customer that’s exactly what it is.
- WhatsApp button links to the correct business number (check it isn’t a placeholder)
- Pre-filled message tells you which page the enquiry came from
- Business profile completed with hours, address and description
- Someone is responsible for replying within an agreed time
- Marketing messages only sent to contacts who actively opted in
Payments and Checkout
If you take payments online, a clumsy checkout will cost you more than almost any marketing problem. Somebody who has already decided to pay is the most expensive person you can lose.
- Test transactions completed successfully with real cards and bank transfer
- Naira pricing displayed clearly, with any fees shown before the final step
- Guest checkout available where possible
- Payment confirmation email and on-screen confirmation both working
- Failed-payment path tested: what does the buyer see, and can they retry?
- Delivery costs and timelines stated before checkout, not after
Search and AI Visibility
Being indexed is the bare minimum. Being found takes groundwork, and that groundwork is far cheaper to lay before launch than to dig up afterwards.
- Each important page targets one clear search intent, with a focus keyword set
- Unique title tag and meta description on every page
- One H1 per page, with a logical heading structure underneath
- No important page set to noindex (check this carefully after moving from staging)
- robots.txt allows crawling and lists your sitemap
- XML sitemap submitted in Google Search Console
- Organisation or LocalBusiness structured data added
- Old URLs redirected to new ones with 301 redirects if this is a rebuild
- Descriptive alt text on meaningful images
- Internal links connect related pages
- Pages answer common buyer questions directly and early, which helps both search results and AI-generated answers
Measurement
If you can’t tell where enquiries come from, you can’t tell which marketing is working, and sooner or later you’ll cut the wrong thing.
- Analytics installed and verified to be recording visits
- Key actions tracked as conversions: form submissions, WhatsApp clicks, calls, purchases
- Test each conversion fires once, and only once
- UTM parameters used on every campaign link
- CRM receives every enquiry with its source recorded
- A source of truth agreed for reporting, rather than trusting platform dashboards
- Baseline numbers recorded in launch week, so improvements can be proven later
Data Protection and Consent
The Nigeria Data Protection Act governs how you collect and use personal data. Take qualified advice on your own obligations. These are the basics no launch should skip.
- Privacy notice published, explaining what you collect and why
- Marketing consent is a separate, unticked opt-in, not bundled into terms
- Cookie and tracking consent handled appropriately for the tools you use
- Contact forms collect only data you need
- Unsubscribe works, and applies across every channel you market through
- Access to customer data limited to people who need it
Security and Reliability
A hacked or offline site cancels out every other item on this list.
- SSL certificate active, and every page loads over HTTPS
- Admin logins use strong passwords and two-factor authentication
- Default admin username changed
- Automatic backups running, stored off the server, and restored at least once as a test
- Themes and plugins updated, and abandoned plugins replaced
- Uptime monitoring set up to alert you when the site goes down
- Domain and hosting renewals on auto-renew, registered in your business’s name
- Firewall or security plugin configured
Accessibility and Usability
Accessible sites work better for everyone, including the customer squinting at a small screen in Lagos sunshine.
- Text contrast readable in bright conditions
- Body text at least 16px on mobile
- Every image that carries meaning has alt text
- Site usable with keyboard alone
- Form fields have visible labels, not only placeholder text
- Error messages explain how to fix the problem
Launch Week
Real traffic finds the problems your testing missed, and most of them show up in the first few days.
- Every page checked on mobile after going live, not only on staging
- Search Console checked for crawl and indexing errors
- Test enquiry submitted through every form on the live site
- Old site’s important URLs checked for working redirects
- Someone assigned to monitor enquiries and errors daily for the first two weeks
- Launch baseline recorded: traffic, enquiries, conversion rate
Five Checks That Catch the Expensive Failures
Short on time? Do these five first. Each one is a failure that has cost businesses months of enquiries before anybody noticed.
- Submit every form yourself on the live site, and check the enquiry arrives. Forms that look perfect and deliver nowhere are far more common than anyone expects.
- Tap every WhatsApp and phone link on a real phone. Placeholder numbers make it onto live sites surprisingly often.
- Make sure no important page is set to noindex. Staging sites are routinely hidden from search engines, and the setting often follows the site to its live address.
- Search the site for placeholder text. Lorem ipsum, [X], TBD and leftover theme demo copy destroy trust in a second.
- Confirm analytics records a test visit and a test conversion. Without working measurement, you can’t tell which marketing pays for itself, and every budget decision after launch becomes a guess.
Pretty Doesn’t Pay
A beautiful site with a broken form produces nothing. A plain site where every form works, every number rings, every page is indexed and every enquiry is tracked will beat it every month. Design earns the attention. This checklist decides whether the attention turns into customers. For more on how the two fit together, read the guides to design and trust and when a redesign is worth it.
Back to Your Phone
Did the form arrive? Did the right chat open? If either answer was no, you’ve found your first job for tomorrow morning. If both were yes, there are 82 checks to go.
Already live and not sure what else is broken? The free 2-minute diagnostic shows which of your four walls is weakest. A site that gets visitors and few enquiries usually points to Convert.
Businesses spending ₦1M or more a month on marketing also get a free 30-minute Leak Check. We’ll start with your contact form.
This article covers one part of a bigger system. Our guide to digital marketing in Nigeria shows how the four walls fit together, and the order to build them in.
