Website launch checklist.

Why brand assets break launches

Most launch reviews focus on code, performance and SEO keywords. Brand assets slip through because they fail silently: the page works, the deploy is green, nothing errors — but the first time someone shares the link on Slack, X or WhatsApp, the preview is an empty grey card. The favicon is a default letter tile. The installed web app shows a generic icon. None of that shows up in error tracking, and all of it shapes the first impression of a launch.

This checklist covers the five asset categories that decide how your site looks everywhere except your own browser: social previews, browser tabs, home screens, installed apps and embedded icon usage.

1 · Open Graph & social previews

• og:title, og:description, og:image present on every important page — not just the homepage.
• og:image is an absolute URL and at least 1200×630. Relative paths break in every major crawler.
• The image actually loads — verify the HTTP status and content type, not just the markup.
• No two pages share one og:image unless it is intentional. Shared images make every link look identical in feeds.
• twitter:card is set (summary_large_image for pages with big visuals).

The fastest check is the Open Graph checker: paste a URL and it fetches the image for real, measures it and previews the card. For a whole site at once, run the brand asset audit or the batch audit from a sitemap.

2 · Favicons & browser identity

• SVG favicon plus PNG fallbacks (32×32, 96×96, 16×16) and /favicon.ico for older clients.
• apple-touch-icon 180×180 for iOS home screens.
• Small sizes stay legible — a detailed logo can blur into noise at 16 px. Test it.

The favicon checker inspects every declared icon, fetches each file, validates formats and flags a missing manifest. Missing the icons themselves? The favicon generator builds the complete set — SVG, ICO, apple-touch, manifest icons — in one download.

3 · PWA manifest & installability

• site.webmanifest linked in the head, with correct name, icons and theme colors.
• 192×192 and 512×512 icons exist and load — the minimum Android install set.
• A maskable icon so the launcher can crop to any shape without clipping your mark.

Even if you are not shipping an installable PWA, the manifest drives Android browser UI. Generate a complete icon set with the PWA icon generator.

4 · SVG icons & logos

• Every SVG has a viewBox — without one, icons scale unpredictably in different containers.
• No scripts or external references inside SVGs you serve — an inline <script> in a logo file is an XSS vector.
• Optimized output — editor metadata and embedded rasters routinely triple file size.

The SVG analyzer reports viewBox, security flags, embedded rasters and byte savings, and hands you optimized code.

5 · One pass before release

Instead of checking each category by hand, run the free brand asset audit once on your deploy preview and once on the live domain. It scores all five categories out of 100, lists every issue with evidence (HTTP statuses, real dimensions, missing tags) and links directly into the right generator for each fix. Teams that want it in CI can audit every deploy preview automatically — see the CI examples.

# one-line pre-launch check (any machine with curl)
curl -s https://siteassets.dev/api/v1/og/check?url=https://your-site.com | jq .score

After launch

• · Force-refresh the social caches: most platforms re-scrape when the URL or image URL changes.
• · Re-run the audit on the production domain — absolute paths and manifest scope behave differently there.
• · Submit the launch URL in Google Search Console and confirm the favicon renders in the result preview.

FAQ