In this guide
An RIA website is ready to launch only when five systems agree: the firm’s public identity, domain and email, website content, reviewer-approved disclosures and records, and technical go-live. A polished homepage with an untested form, a stale public document, or an accidental noindex directive is not launch-ready.
The practical launch rule: assign an owner, collect evidence, and require a pass for every workstream before the website becomes the firm’s public source.
This checklist is for the website portion of an RIA launch. It does not replace the firm’s registration, custodian, technology, employment-transition, insurance, cybersecurity, or legal workstreams.
Start with five launch gates
Use five gates with a named owner, approver, and saved evidence artifact.
Firm facts and public content
Are public facts and pages current and approved?
Domain and email
Does the firm control domain, DNS, mail, recovery, and senders?
Reviewer and records
Are the public version, documents, links, and claims approved?
User journey
Do navigation, forms, mobile, privacy, and accessibility checks work?
Technical go-live
Do HTTPS, canonicals, redirects, robots, sitemap, schema, and measurement pass?
This is an operational framework, not a legal standard. Firm circumstances and implementation determine what applies.
1. Freeze the firm’s public facts
The launch team needs one approved fact sheet before it edits pages, metadata, profiles, or schema. Include:
Approved legal/public names, registration and jurisdictional wording.
Office, contact, service, audience, fee, minimum, and geographic facts approved for public use.
Verified names, roles, credentials, and biographies for visible people.
Approved social profiles, documents, disclosures, and regulatory links.
Use the SEC’s Investment Adviser Public Disclosure database as one verification source for public filing information. Do not treat a database check as a substitute for the firm’s own approval or reviewer.
Search every draft for old names, placeholders, invented testimonials, unsupported superlatives, stale biographies, sample data, and template text. A fact should not become public because it survived in a copied component.
Gate: Every public fact has a source and approver; unresolved facts do not launch.
2. Put the domain and email under firm control
The firm should know which account controls the domain—not just who built the website. Before launch:
Confirm the firm or its expressly authorized party controls the registrant and registrar account.
Turn on multi-factor authentication; record recovery, renewal, and billing ownership.
Export the DNS inventory and name the owner and purpose of every record before changing it.
Confirm the root and www behavior and a valid TLS certificate on every canonical hostname.
ICANN explains that registrants generally have the right to transfer a domain between registrars, subject to applicable rules and possible 60-day locks. Establish control early instead of discovering the account boundary during cutover. See ICANN’s FAQs for registrants.
For the practical difference between domain control and the other ownership layers, understand the five layers of advisor website ownership.
Create production mailboxes and aliases before forms begin sending. Inventory every legitimate sender, then follow the firm’s email-provider requirements. Google’s Workspace guidance includes web servers and contact forms when administrators set up SPF and also recommends DKIM and DMARC. Submit every form and confirm the correct production inbox receives the expected message without inappropriate data exposure.
Gate: Registrar/email recovery, DNS, HTTPS, and form delivery all pass.
3. Complete the launch content—without inventing a universal page count
A launch site needs enough information for a reader to understand the firm, assess fit, and take the next step. That usually means an approved home page, service/audience and team information, a contact path, and reviewer-directed documents and disclosures.
The exact page set is not universal. It changes with the firm’s services, registration status, affiliations, business model, jurisdictions, and reviewer requirements.
Before launch, check that:
Every page has a clear purpose, one primary next action, and production destinations.
No placeholder copy, sample people, fictional proof, draft disclosures, or reviewer notes remain.
Assets have documented sources and permitted use; documents and material factual claims are current.
Footer, announcement, mobile-menu, modal, and responsive copy has been checked—not only the desktop body.
Gate: The page inventory, visible content, assets, and destinations are approved.
4. Complete reviewer, marketing, and records controls
An RIA website is generally part of the firm’s public marketing presence. The designated reviewer should determine which website content constitutes an advertisement and how the applicable requirements apply. The SEC’s investment adviser marketing guide summarizes prohibitions against materially misleading advertising and requirements affecting testimonials, endorsements, third-party ratings, performance, and substantiation.
Create a final review packet with:
The page/URL inventory and exact public copy, images, documents, metadata, and structured-data descriptions.
Support for material factual claims.
Approved treatment of testimonials, endorsements, ratings, awards, performance, and hypothetical results, if used.
Required disclosures, locations, reviewer, review date, exceptions, and final approval.
If Form CRS applies to the firm, the current Form CRS instructions say the current relationship summary must be posted prominently on the firm’s public website, if it has one, in an easily accessible place and format. The firm’s reviewer should determine the approved document, label, and placement for the launch.
Preserve the approved version—not merely the editable draft. SEC-registered advisers should evaluate 17 CFR 275.204-2, including advertisement-copy and retention requirements. Save the published version, support, approval, and publication log in the designated records system.
Gate: The public version is approved, required materials are placed, and publication evidence can be preserved.
5. Test the complete visitor journey
Test the site as a prospect would use it, not as the person who built it remembers it.
Test navigation, headings, tables, menus, consent controls, and messages on desktop and phone outside the design canvas.
Verify keyboard access, focus, image alternatives, contrast, zoom, and form labels.
The Department of Justice provides guidance on web accessibility and the ADA. An automated scan alone does not establish legal conformance or determine which laws apply. Ask the appropriate professionals to review the firm’s obligations.
Forms and account transitions
Test submission, errors, success, delivery, ownership, and retention for every form.
Check scheduler, portal, login, and application handoffs without real customer data.
Confirm privacy and consent treatment match the approved data path.
Links and files
Check links, calls, email, downloads, buttons, and public files on desktop and phone.
Remove staging/share links and resolve broken links or redirect loops.
Gate: An independent tester passes the primary journey and every defect is fixed or accepted.
6. Pass search and entity QA
Search visibility starts with a crawlable, canonical production site. It does not begin with a promise that Google will index a page.
For every page intended for search:
Confirm an HTTP 200 final response.
Confirm the final URL and redirects use HTTPS.
Use a self-referencing canonical and link internally to that canonical URL. Google documents self-referencing canonicals as a best practice in its canonical URL guidance.
Confirm the meta robots directive and any X-Robots-Tag match the intended indexing behavior.
Confirm robots.txt permits intended crawling and does not block resources needed to render the page.
Include only canonical, indexable, successful URLs in the XML sitemap.
Align the title, meta description, H1, visible topic, and Open Graph information.
Use only structured data that matches visible, verified facts; remove duplicate or fictional entities and unverified sameAs profiles.
For a permanent move, update internal links, canonicals, and the sitemap, and use a permanent server-side redirect such as 301 or 308, as described in Google’s redirect guidance.
Before announcing, verify the Search Console property, confirm the sitemap, and test priority URLs. Google’s crawling and indexing documentation explains these controls, but none guarantees immediate indexing or a ranking.
Gate: Public pages pass crawl, canonical, index, sitemap, entity, and measurement checks.
7. Cut over in a controlled sequence
A clean cutover has an order. Write it down before anyone changes DNS or presses publish.
Freeze approved copy/configuration; save DNS and recovery references.
Confirm reviewer approval and the go-live owner.
Publish or connect the production host.
Apply planned redirects and canonicals.
Verify HTTPS, priority pages, forms, email, navigation, robots, sitemap, and measurement on production.
Save the evidence/defect log; recheck after propagation, the next business day, and after one week.
Do not end an old website service or remove a recovery path until the receiving site, redirects, forms, and required handoff materials pass acceptance, subject to the governing agreement and transition plan.
Gate: Production passes and the launch owner signs the evidence log.
Stop the launch if any of these remain unresolved
The firm cannot access or recover the registrar, DNS, or production email accounts.
The final public version lacks required reviewer approval.
A required document/disclosure is wrong, or a material claim lacks support.
A form fails or sends data to an unapproved destination.
HTTPS, canonical URLs, redirects, or indexability are materially wrong.
Staging, fictional, placeholder, or unsupported entity content remains public.
The firm lacks the approved/published record or an accountable launch-day owner.
Do not make an unreviewed or broken site the firm’s public source.
The copy-and-use RIA website launch checklist
The companion printable checklist turns every gate into an owner, evidence field, result, and sign-off. It includes firm facts, domain and email, reviewer records, forms, accessibility, search, cutover, stop-the-launch checks, and final approval.
If you are also budgeting the launch, compare first-year and ongoing website costs.
How Allux fits into an RIA website launch
This section describes Allux specifically.
Allux is an AI-native website and publishing platform for independent financial advisors. The current Allux launch page explains the new-RIA website offer, while Allux pricing and the Portability Guarantee state the commercial and ownership boundaries.
Allux provides workflow infrastructure, not legal or regulatory advice. The firm and its designated reviewer remain responsible for approving public content and determining the requirements that apply.