How We Check a Cloned Website: The 47-Point Quality Checklist

“Looks the same” is where amateur clones stop and professional ones begin. Below is the actual checklist we run before any project leaves our staging, published in full. Use it to QA our work, someone else’s, or your own.

Visual fidelity (compare side by side with the original)

1. Typography: families, weights, sizes, line-heights match on every template.
2. Spacing rhythm: section paddings and gaps within 2-3px of the original.
3. Colors match exactly (picked, not eyeballed).
4. Hover, focus and active states on every interactive element.
5. Animations: same triggers, same easing, same durations.
6. Icons and graphics crisp on retina displays.
7. Favicons, page titles and social-share images present.

Responsive behavior

8. Standard breakpoints: 360, 390, 768, 1024, 1280, 1440, 1920.
9. Real devices, not just DevTools: at minimum one iPhone, one Android, one tablet.
10. No horizontal scroll at any width.
11. Touch targets at least 40px on mobile.
12. Mobile menu: opens, closes, scroll-locks, every link works.
13. Images serve appropriately sized files on small screens.

Functional checks

14. Every form submits; the submission arrives (email/CRM), and the success state shows.
15. Form validation and error messages behave sensibly.
16. Anti-spam in place (honeypot or equivalent), no captcha friction unless requested.
17. Every internal link resolves; zero 404s (crawled, not clicked).
18. External links open correctly (and rel attributes are sane).
19. Sliders, tabs, accordions, calculators: every interaction path tried.
20. Search works, if the site has it.
21. The 404 page exists, is styled and links back to safety.

Performance

22. Mobile PageSpeed at least matches the original; our target is 90+.
23. Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5s on 4G.
24. No layout shift while loading (CLS near zero).
25. Images compressed and lazy-loaded below the fold.
26. No console errors on any template.
27. Caching active; assets fingerprinted for clean cache busting.

SEO integrity

28. URL structure preserved from the source, or a complete 301 map exists.
29. Every page has its title and meta description migrated.
30. One H1 per page; heading hierarchy is logical.
31. Image alt texts carried over.
32. Canonical tags correct on every template.
33. Structured data valid (Rich Results test passes).
34. XML sitemap generates and lists exactly the right pages.
35. robots.txt sane; staging was noindex, production is not, verified twice.
36. Analytics and pixels firing, with events tested end to end.

Code and platform hygiene

37. No leftover links or asset calls to the source platform’s domain.
38. No unused libraries shipped “just in case”.
39. The CMS admin is usable by a normal human: pages, texts, images editable without touching code.
40. Admin accounts, roles and passwords set properly; default users removed.
41. SSL active, HTTP redirects to HTTPS, no mixed-content warnings.
42. Automated offsite backups configured before launch (the 3-2-1 setup).

Handover

43. All credentials delivered: hosting, CMS, domain, analytics, integrations.
44. A short written guide: how to edit typical content, where things live.
45. Source files and database export handed over.
46. Support window dates stated in writing (ours is 30 days).
47. The client has actually logged in and edited something themselves, the final, telling test.

That is the whole list. If a provider’s QA is “we looked at it and it seems fine”, now you know what to send them. If you would rather it just be done this way by default, that is the standard here.