The Checklist to Follow Before your Website goes Live
Is your website ready and prepared to be launched to the millions of Internet users around the globe? Launching and building a website are two very different things, but are considered the same in most of the cases. Even after you have created a scintillating website, added the best content, inserted beautiful images, there still exist a number of details that need attention, and if overlooked could lead to blunders.
To avoid embarrassing moments once your website is launched and everybody gets the URL, we have come up with a
‘Checklist to Follow Before your Website goes Live’
1. A Close Check on the Functionality of all URL’s in the Website
Every website is built with a copious amount of code, which is often spread over different pages built to carry out various tasks. It is essential to carry out checks to see if these URL’s are working and all the other tasks are being completed optimally or not. For example, when someone clicks ‘About Us’ on your homepage, they should be directed to the correct URL which leads to the ‘About Us’ page and not any other page, or an error page. Issues such as these may lead to customer dissatisfaction and might even cost you precious sales.
If you have a small website with a handful of pages, you can go the manual way and check all the live URLs and make sure they are placed correctly. If, however, you have an extensive website with fifty or hundred pages, manually reviewing each URL will be a time-consuming task. Therefore, you can automate the URL check. Many tools are available online, both free and paid to help you with website auditing and checking your functioning and non-functioning URLs.
Once you are done with all URLs, you should also check the forms on the website as well. Check if the:
- Forms are submitting properly
- Data is reaching its designated destination
- An appropriate message is being displayed once the forms are submitted
- Auto-response mail is working properly
2. Proofread all the Content on the Website
Typos and grammar errors can be really off-putting for visitors to see on your website. Your message should reach them clearly with correct language and perfect grammar. Spend some extra time before your website goes live to double and triple check your content for grammatical, spelling and factual errors. Make sure you go through all the text on the website, which includes page names, contact details and all other text, and not just blogs and posts.
If you are the writer of the content on the website, it would be helpful if you get it checked by another pair of eyeballs, as writers often miss errors due to ‘word blindness’ caused from spending too much time with your own write-ups. Once you are done proofreading, make sure to check the font size and bullet points format as well to wrap things up.
3. Ensure that your Website is Multi-Device Optimised
If you are making a website, you have to accept the fact that mobile users over desktop users dominate the Internet, and your website should cater to the dominant side of the device war. Testing the compatibility with mobile devices should be one of the top things on your priority list before your website is launched, even more so since Google now employs ‘mobile-first indexing’, which means the mobile version of your website is the first version that Google adds in their index, and it is the incipiency of how your website is ranked.
As a result, your website should be mobile optimised and just as efficient on mobiles as it on other devices, majorly desktops. To put things into perspective, when your website is accessed on a mobile, the text should be adequately spaced and easy to read, the images should display suitably, the navigations should be smooth, and the buttons should be appropriately spaced.
4. Create Social Media Accounts for your Website Brand
If we were writing this article 10 years ago, this step might not have even featured in the list. But the sheer speed at which social media has penetrated the daily life of the majority of internet users is enormous. Nowadays, people tend to spend a large chunk of their online time on social media channels, which has become one of the major platforms for brand marketing. People now expect all brands to have a social media presence so that they informally connect to the brand outside of their website. If there is no social media presence of your brand, there might be a chance that your customer base does not grow as swiftly as it should.
Your social media team should create accounts on all major social media channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Quora and many others, and create unique content for the same, which can be posted just as the website is launched. This way, when you launch your website, the social media pages will have regular content and will not give an impression of an abandoned ship.
5. Ensure the Security of your Website
In this digital world, online security is probably the biggest concern for all Internet users and website owners. If a user visits your website, their data should be secured inside the vaults that hackers cannot open. Each year, the number of websites getting hacked is increasing tremendously, as hackers are opening new doors now and then to get hands on your data. Before you even think of launching your website, you need to ensure the security of your and the user’s data. You can do so by following a few steps, which are:
- The computers which have access to the admin panel of the website must be free of malware and any other foreign programs which might cause harm to the computer or the data. Make sure you install reputable virus scanners and scan the computer regularly to flush out any unwanted programs.
- Always ensure that the passwords you use are unique and in no way similar to what you use on other websites. This is a healthy practice as it ensures that all your accounts stay healthy and independent of any data cracks in the system.
- If you use any software to boost your website infrastructure, ensure that they are up-to-date and secure.
- If you are launching a website which sells a service online and requires users to pay via their cards or other payment platforms, make sure you use the HTTPS protocol and invest in a good payment gateway to keep the data secure.
6. Monitor the Speed of the Website
Did you know that site speed is a deciding factor in confirmed sales? The delay of even an additional second can cause the customer to close the tab and never return to your website. In today’s time, there is no excuse for your website to be so slow that loading a page should take half a minute.
Before you go for a full-blown launch of your website, make sure you are monitoring the speed of your website and how much time it takes to load each and every webpage. Loading speed is also a ranking factor as far as Google is concerned. Therefore, it is imperative that your website loads quickly and completely, irrespective of the device.
7. Take care of the Boring Legal Stuff
While you may feel that the legal stuff is boring and might not hold significant value, it is essential to take care of all the licenses and conditions if you do not want to get into legal issues later on. Here is a sub-checklist for you to follow when taking care of the legalities of running your website:
• You should ensure that you have appropriate licenses for all your images, fonts, plugins and other third-party commercials you have on your website.
• It is recommended that you include a ‘Terms of Service’ in detail so that it explains your services in detail and help you avoid any clashes in the future. Many websites offer help in framing a Terms of Service page on your website.
• If your website is collecting user data, you should frame your Privacy Policy so that users are comfortable by using your website. Compliance with international data laws is a must if you have users from multiple countries.
• If you have a wide demographic, learn about the legal requirements in different geographical locations about age verification, credit card payments, consent and much more.
- A cookie warning is a must in many countries, so make sure you show one.
8. Configure a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Plugin to Track your Performance
Search Engine Optimisation is a healthy practice to help you get your website rank highly on different search engines, so as to increase sales and gain a competitive edge over your opponents in the market. If you are creating a website and want to stay one step ahead, invest in an SEO plugin and continuously monitor your performance. There are a number of plugins available which will help you get started in no time. Below are some SEO practices which should be followed:
- Every page should have a unique title and a meta description for optimisation.
- Every picture should have alt tags with proper tags.
- Every URL in your website should be search engine friendly and should contain proper words rather than a random batch of letters and numbers.
- Remove spam comments as soon as you get them, as these comments might link to unprotected and questionable websites, which might result in a penalty for your website.
9. Create and Manage Site Backups
So now you have completed a majority of tasks before you can launch your website- now what? One thing you should remember is that an unpleasant technical difficulty can occur anytime, which can result in the loss of money, time and customers. Losing your business to the lack of site backups will be catastrophic, and many companies cannot recover entirely in case of a disastrous data loss. So before your website is launched into the abyss we call the Internet, take out a few moments to make a full backup of our website, so that you are prepared for the worst.
To make a backup of your site, you can either go the manual way or the automatic way. For a manual backup, you just need to transfer the files to your hard drive manually. This method is suitable for a limited number of times, but over the long run, this becomes obsolete. You will have to regularly backup your content if it is routinely updated, otherwise, your backups will become redundant, and you will face a risk of losing a multitude of data.
If you regularly update data on your website, you should look forward to automatic backup manoeuvres. There exists a number of plugins for your website which can be used to schedule a full site backup, thus taking one task out of your hands. But even if you are using an automatic backup plugin, it is good practice to continually check if the plugin is working or not. Whatever solution you go forward with, ensure that you are always making use of the updated version of your website. Moreover, make sure you keep all the data copies of your website in a secure location, so as to refer to them if a situation arises.
10. Create a Smart and Custom Error Page
Nobody likes to encounter a 404 error page, but they still exist, and one should maximise its usage. If your website is new, there might not be a high chance that 404 error occurs, but a visitor might mistype a URL and land on the error page. To make sure you do not lose this customer, create a custom 404 error page. You can are familiar with PHP and HTML, modifying the 404 page will be easy, but if you are not sure of how to do it, there are a variety of plugins available which can help you create a customised 404 page.
To Wrap Things Up
Well, there you have it! By now you must have got a broad idea of things to do before you launch a website. While many tasks should be done before you launch a website, but this list covers the most important and crucial ones. Always remember that every website is different and should be treated as such, and therefore consider this list as a general one only. Once your site is launched, be ready with another set of tasks and keep checking for bugs and enhance the customer experience as you go along.
