Guides → Post-launch monitoring: first 30 days — SGEN

A post-launch monitoring routine for your first 30 days

How to monitor your SGEN site for the first 30 days post-launch

Post-launch monitoring keeps small problems from becoming invisible disasters. The first 30 days after a site goes live are when broken links from old emails surface, when spam bots discover your contact form, and when the first payment-gateway misconfiguration shows up as a cluster of stuck orders. This guide gives you a concrete, scheduled rhythm — intensive in the first three days, tapering to weekly by day fifteen — built entirely inside your SGEN admin. Every task maps to a specific SGEN panel so you always know where you are going and why. No third-party dashboards required.

What is this for?

This is a monitoring workflow, not a build or configuration task. You are observing your live site across four SGEN data surfaces: Event Logs, Analytics Reports, Form Submissions, and Orders — plus the Discussions moderation queue for sites with comments enabled. The cadence is heavier in days 1–3 because that is when configuration mistakes and broken links surface fastest under real traffic. By week four you are checking weekly and building the baseline you will carry into month two.

The panels you will rotate through during the 30 days:

Panel	Path in admin	What you watch
Event Logs	Analytics → Event Logs	Raw traffic rows, 404 hits, form events
Reports	Analytics → Reports	Traffic trend line, top pages
Submissions	Forms → Submissions	New leads, spam entries
Orders	Ecommerce → Orders	Payment status, order lifecycle
Discussions	Discussions	Pending comments, spam queue

Every one of these panels is read-only during the monitoring workflow. You are not publishing changes, reconfiguring forms, or editing products. If a check reveals a problem that requires a change, address it in the relevant admin area separately and then return to the monitoring rhythm.

Good use cases

You just launched a new SGEN site and need to confirm it is healthy before stepping back to a weekly cadence.

You ran a campaign — email blast, paid ad, or social post — and want to watch for the traffic spike and any conversion gaps it reveals.

You are handing monitoring duties to a team member and need a written routine they can follow without guessing which panel to open first.

Your site had a quiet launch and you want to catch comment spam early, before hundreds of entries fill the Pending queue.

You want to confirm your ecommerce checkout worked end-to-end with real customers, not just a test order.

You are preparing a 30-day health report for a client or stakeholder and need a structured evidence trail to point to.

What NOT to use this for

Permanent daily monitoring after day 30

By day 31 you should move to a lighter weekly rhythm. This guide covers the intensive launch window only.

Debugging a specific broken feature

If a form is not capturing submissions or a payment is failing, the individual feature docs linked at the bottom of this page cover the full troubleshooting path.

Stakeholder-ready reporting

This guide is for the site owner running the checks. For shareable reports, export from Analytics → Reports or Forms → Reports and format separately.

How this connects to other features

Event Logs

is the raw one-row-per-event log used in every check from day 1 through day 14.

Analytics Reports

provides the doughnut and trend charts used in the day 4–7 and day 15–30 reviews.

Form Submissions

is the lead inbox scanned for spam during the daily phase.

Form Reports

gives the source-breakdown doughnut referenced in the day 1 scenario.

Orders

is the order list used in the check 3 and the day 15–30 status audit.

Discussions

covers the full comment moderation flow for the day 4–14 sprints.

Before you start

Confirm these are in place before beginning the 30-day watch:

Analytics is recording. Open Analytics → Event Logs. You should see rows with type Page View within the first hour of public traffic. An empty log after two hours means your site may not be live at the intended domain.
At least one published form is live on the public site and a test submission already appears in Forms → Submissions.
A test order exists in Ecommerce → Orders in Pending state (if you sell online), so you have a baseline row when real orders start arriving.
Discussions is set to Pending (the default). Keep manual review on for the first 30 days — auto-approve is risky while spam bots are still discovering the site.
You have admin access to all five panels listed in the table above. If your SGEN user role is restricted, ask your account owner to grant access to Analytics, Forms, Ecommerce, and Discussions before launch day.

Where this lives

This workflow does not have a single dedicated URL — you rotate between five panels in your SGEN admin on a set schedule. Bookmark these five URLs now so you can open each check with one click:

Analytics → Event Logs — raw traffic log with 404 filter and event-type tabs
Analytics → Reports — doughnut and trend charts with date-range selector and top-N control
Forms → Submissions — lead inbox with New / Read / Trash filter tabs and bulk-action checkbox
Ecommerce → Orders — status tabs: Completed / Shipped / Awaiting Payment / Refunded / Trash
Discussions — Pending / Approved / Spam / Trash moderation queue with bulk-action row

All five panels are accessible from the left navigation sidebar in your SGEN admin. If you do not see a panel in the sidebar, your user role may not have access — check with your account owner. The monitoring rhythm below tells you exactly which panel to open at each phase, so you never need to wonder where to look next.

Steps

Work through the phases in order. Each phase maps to one time window. Complete all checks in a phase before moving on to the next.

Day 1–3 — Intensive phase (check hourly)

The first three days are when configuration mistakes and stale links surface under real traffic. Set a recurring hourly reminder and run checks A through D each time the timer fires.

Check A — Confirm traffic is arriving (Analytics → Event Logs)

Open Analytics → Event Logs. You should see rows with type Page View accumulating within the first hour of launch. Filter by 404 Not Found — every path listed here is a broken link your visitors are hitting in real time. Note the referrer column: it tells you where the broken link lives (your own email, a social post, an old Google result).

your business saw 18 page-view events and 2 broken-link hits on hour one — both on /shop/old-collection, traced via the referrer column to an email campaign sent the previous month. They created a redirect that afternoon before the next email batch went out.

If you see zero page-view rows after two hours: your domain may not be pointing at your SGEN site, or the site may still be in draft mode. Check Settings → General for the published URL and confirm DNS has propagated before escalating to SGEN support.

Check B — Confirm forms are capturing leads (Forms → Submissions)

Open Forms → Submissions. Your pre-launch test submission should appear here with status New. If you configured email notification on submit, confirm that email arrived in your inbox.

Known limitation — third-party email sync: Direct sync between SGEN form submissions and external email platforms (Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Kit) is in active development and is not yet available in the current release. During the 30-day watch, treat Forms → Submissions as the authoritative record. If you need leads to reach your email platform automatically, a webhook-based fallback is available: your developer sets up a receiving address and SGEN sends form data to it automatically on every submission. Contact SGEN support for the webhook setup guide. Until that integration ships, export weekly via Forms → Submissions → Export CSV and import manually into your email platform.

your business launched with one contact form. By end of day 1, Submissions showed 4 leads — all Status New. Referrers: 2 Direct, 1 Google Organic, 1 Email. No spam yet — bots typically take 48–72 hours to discover a newly live form.

Check C — Confirm first orders are intact (Ecommerce → Orders)

Open Ecommerce → Orders. Your pre-launch test order should sit in Pending. Real customer orders appear here with their payment method and status badge. Watch for any order landing in Awaiting Payment — a payment-gateway configuration issue will show up here within hours of launch.

Check D — Watch the Discussions queue (Discussions)

Open Discussions → Pending. On day 1–3 this queue should be empty or hold only genuine comments. More than 3–4 entries from unrecognised accounts means spam bots have found your comment form. Bulk-mark them Spam now — the earlier you act, the cleaner the queue stays.

Day 4–7 — Daily rhythm (morning + evening)

By day four the site is stable enough for twice-daily checks. Morning: scan overnight activity. Evening: confirm the day's traffic closed cleanly.

Morning check — Analytics → Reports

Open Analytics → Reports. Set the date range to Last 7 days and look for two things:

The trend line is not dropping. A drop of more than 30% from yesterday without a known cause — a weekend, a paused campaign, a public holiday — is worth investigating in Event Logs before assuming it is normal variance.
The top pages make sense. Your homepage and key landing pages should dominate the doughnut. An unexpected page appearing in the top 3 is worth tracing — filter Event Logs by that path to see where the traffic is coming from.

Evening check — Forms → Submissions spam scan

Open Forms → Submissions and filter by New. Scan the latest entries for spam patterns: subject or message body in a language that does not match your customer base; email field is random characters at a throwaway domain; multiple near-identical entries arriving within minutes. Select all spam entries and bulk-move to Trash — trashed entries stop counting against your lead total and keep your Submissions list clean.

Example 1: your business' spam burst on day 5. Between day 4 and day 5 overnight, Submissions gained 11 new entries — 8 were spam (identical message body, rotating throwaway email addresses). your business bulk-trashed those 8 in one action, leaving 3 genuine leads with status New. Because they caught it on day 5 rather than day 14, the Trash count stayed manageable and the cleanup took under 30 seconds.

Day 8–14 — Every-other-day rhythm

By week two the site has enough data for trend analysis. Check every other day; each check takes roughly 10 minutes.

Traffic trend review — Analytics → Reports

Set the date range to Last 14 days and examine the line chart.

404 trend: the 404 count should be flat or falling. A count that rises after day three means a new broken link has appeared — a blog post published with a bad internal link, or a product page removed without a redirect.
Exit-page signals: in Event Logs, filter by Page View and identify paths that appear only once per session across many visitors. These are pages people land on and immediately leave. A high exit rate on a product page suggests the page is not converting and warrants a content or layout review.
Top-5 pages: note which pages are consistently in the doughnut across both weeks. These become your content anchors — treat them as higher-priority for updates going into month two.

Comment moderation sprint — Discussions

Open Discussions → Pending and process the queue:

Read each comment's text.
Genuine comment: click Approve — it goes public immediately.
Spam: click Spam — it leaves Pending and trains SGEN's filter.
Unsure: click Trash — it is hidden but recoverable.
To reply: use the Reply field below the comment. Your reply posts publicly under the original as the site owner.

Never bulk-delete from Pending without reading — permanent deletion cannot be undone. Move to Trash first when in doubt; Trash is recoverable.

Example 2: your business' first genuine comment thread. On day 10, an editor commented on the blog post "How we source our beans": "Do you ship to Canada?" a teammate followed the same day: "Same question — loved the post." your business approved both comments, then replied under Ada's with: "Yes — we ship to Canada via Canada Post. Standard rates apply." Both comments went public within seconds of approval, and the reply thread drove additional organic traffic by day 14.

Day 15–30 — Weekly rhythm

By the third week, a weekly check is sufficient. Block 20–30 minutes once a week, ideally the same day and time so it becomes a habit before month two begins.

Weekly performance review — Analytics → Reports

Set the date range to Last 30 days and build your baseline:

Which 5 pages drive the most traffic? Write them down — these are your content anchors going into month two.
What is your 30-day 404 count? More than 20 unique broken paths points to a structural issue: a site migration with missing redirects, or a product category removed without replacements.
Is the trend line up, flat, or down? For a newly launched site, flat is acceptable in week three. Down is worth a conversation with your content or campaign team. Up means launch content is working.

Content gap scan — Event Logs

Filter Event Logs by Page View and look for paths with fewer than 5 views across the full 30-day window. These are pages visitors are not finding. Ask: are they linked from the site navigation? Are they in your sitemap? A page with zero traffic after 30 days is either invisible in navigation or not meeting a real need — note it for the month-two content plan.

Order status audit — Ecommerce → Orders

Run a full status review:

Completed: count should match your expected revenue total for the period.
Shipped: rows older than 7 days that have not moved to Completed need a manual status update.
Awaiting Payment: rows older than 3 days almost certainly represent abandoned or failed payments — move to Cancelled via the row action menu.
Refunded / Trash: verify these match your records before closing out the month.

Example 3: your business' 30-day order audit. By day 30, your business had 12 orders: 7 Completed, 2 Shipped, 1 Awaiting Payment (a developer — payment had failed at the gateway on day 22), 1 Refunded, 1 Trash. They moved Alan's order to Cancelled, contacted him directly with a fresh checkout link, and he re-ordered the same day. The full audit took 12 minutes for all 12 rows.

What success looks like

Success looks like

By the end of day 30 you should be able to confirm all of the following without hesitation: When all five of those are true, you are ready to move from this intensive 30-day rhythm to a lighter standing weekly check-in.

Event Logs shows a consistent daily page-view count. The 404 total has been flat or falling since day 3, and no path appears in the 404 list more than 3 times without a redirect already in place.
Forms → Submissions shows a growing lead count. The Trash queue contains only clearly identified spam. You know your daily average lead volume and can spot an anomaly by eye.
Analytics → Reports shows a trend line that is flat or rising. Your top 5 pages have been stable across the last two weeks. You have written down those pages as your content anchors.
Orders shows every Completed and Shipped order is accounted for. No Awaiting Payment rows are older than 3 days. Your order count for the period matches your payment-gateway records.
Discussions Pending queue is empty or holds only today's new comments awaiting a single moderation pass. No spam flood has been left unaddressed for more than 24 hours.

What to do if it does not work

Traffic shows zero rows in Event Logs after 2 hours. Your site may not be live at the intended domain. Check Settings → General for the published URL and confirm DNS has propagated — try loading the site from a mobile connection or a device that is not on your office network. If DNS resolves but Event Logs still shows nothing after four hours, contact SGEN support with your site URL and the time you launched.

Form submissions stop appearing with no form list change. Go to Forms → Forms list and confirm the form is still set to Published. Click View to open it on the live site and submit a test entry with a unique message you can search for. If that test entry does not appear in Submissions within 60 seconds, file a support ticket with the form ID and a screenshot of the submission confirmation the public site displayed.

A cluster of orders stuck in Awaiting Payment. Multiple orders for the same product or payment method failing within the same window is a payment-gateway signal. Attempt a live test purchase for the affected product. If it fails at the payment step, check your payment-gateway dashboard for an error code before contacting SGEN support — the gateway error code is the fastest route to a diagnosis.

Discussions Pending queue exceeds 50 entries overnight. Spam bots have found your comment form. Open Discussions → Pending, select all entries from accounts you do not recognise, and bulk-move to Spam (not Trash — Spam teaches SGEN's filter; Trash just hides them). If the flood continues after 48 hours, go to Discussions → Settings and enable the option that requires a visitor account before submitting a comment. This stops bot floods without disabling comments entirely.

404 count is still rising after day 7. A count that climbs after the first week means a new broken link has appeared since launch. Filter Event Logs by 404 Not Found and look at the Path column — the highest-frequency paths are the most urgent. Fix each by adding a redirect in Settings → Redirects pointing the old path to the correct current URL. Once the redirect is in place, that path should stop appearing in new 404 rows within minutes.

Red-flag patterns — escalate immediately

These four patterns should prompt immediate action rather than waiting for the next scheduled check.

Sudden 50%+ traffic drop. The Event Logs row count today is less than half of yesterday's with no campaign pause or planned downtime to explain it. A drop this size almost always means the site is unreachable for some visitors — an expired SSL certificate, a DNS change, or a hosting incident. Action: open your public site in a private browser window that is not logged in to SGEN. If the page does not load or shows a security warning, contact your hosting provider and SGEN support immediately. Do not wait for the next scheduled check.

Form submissions stop entirely while traffic continues. Forms → Submissions shows zero new entries for 24+ hours, but Event Logs still shows normal page-view activity. This is distinct from the email-sync limitation — SGEN captures submissions internally even without email notification configured. A full stop means the form itself is broken or unpublished. Action: follow the "Form submissions stop appearing" troubleshooting step above. File a support ticket if the test submission does not resolve it.

Cluster of order payment failures. Three or more orders for the same product or payment method stuck in Awaiting Payment within the same 4-hour window. Action: live-test that product's checkout immediately. Pull the error code from your payment-gateway dashboard before contacting SGEN support.

Discussions spam flood (50+ Pending entries overnight). Action: bulk-move to Spam (not Trash), then enable login-required commenting in Discussions → Settings if the flood continues past 48 hours.

Examples

Example 1: Day 5 spam burst — caught and cleaned in under 5 minutes. your business opened Submissions on the morning of day 5 and found 11 new entries. 8 were spam — identical body, rotating throwaway email addresses. 3 were genuine leads from Google Organic. your business selected the 8 spam rows, bulk-moved to Trash, and had the queue clean before their first coffee. The 3 genuine leads were exported via CSV that week and manually imported into their email platform while the third-party sync integration is in active development.

Example 2: Day 10 comment thread — two approvals and a public reply in one sitting. an editor and a teammate both asked about Canadian shipping on the same blog post. your business approved both, then posted a single reply under Ada's comment answering the question publicly for both readers. Both comments went live within seconds. By day 14, that reply thread had driven 3 additional page views from people searching for shipping information.

Example 3: Day 30 order audit — one failed payment surfaced, re-ordered same day. your business's 30-day audit found 1 Awaiting Payment order from a developer, placed on day 22. His Stripe charge had been declined due to an expired card on his account. your business moved the order to Cancelled, emailed Alan a new checkout link, and he completed the purchase that afternoon. The audit covered all 12 orders in 12 minutes — one minute per order at a steady pace.

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