There are many steps to launching a website, and if you don’t take the time needed for each step then problems will arise.
For example: not doing enough research on hosting providers can lead to your site being down or having slower loading times than expected. This would make customers navigate away because they’re too frustrated with waiting around!
This short infographic by WordPress details four areas that need to be double-checked to ensure you don’t end up with egg on your face when launching your new website.
Review your website content, then get someone else to recheck it
By staring at your text and images, you may become content blind.
You’re less likely to notice problems when constantly looking at this material yourself.
Words can start blending together in a foggy manner – so it’s important that someone else reviews them for accuracy!
Check these points and then get a second pair of eyes on them:
- Grammar and spellings.
- Dummy text you left in as a placeholder.
- Duplicate, watermarked or missing images.
- Sentences that don’t make any sense.
- Links that open the correct locations.
- How it all looks on different device screens.
Don’t forget about your SEO (search engine optimisation)
This is one of the most important things you can do before launching a website.
Optimising content, HTML, titles, and meta tags will help search engines find your page as well as people who may be interested in what it has on offer – which means more traffic!
There are some nifty plugins out there that can pre-flight check your SEO, however, nothing beats doing it yourself.
Be mindful and on top of your website’s security
You can’t control what happens in the world, but you might be able to prevent some of its complications by making sure your website is protected with strong security.
- Make sure that both password and authentication systems like two-factor are turned on for safety’s sake!
- Only allow access to your website’s admin area by people who actually need it. On a regular basis check who has access and at what level.
- Ensure that you have automated scheduled regular backups of the website. Should the worst happen you can revert back.
- Make sure that you review all your web security like firewalls, blocking bots and automated attacks.
Check if your website forms and ways to contact you actually work!
Your website launch checklist is not complete without making sure contact forms work properly.
Check all the places where users will interact with you via your site, such as live chat or ways to get in contact with you.
Also, recheck these every week.
There is no point in having a new shiny website, and expecting someone to contact you through it and it not working.
Your user fills in a contact form, clicks send and the email goes into the void never to be seen again.
Summary:
Although you’re probably super excited to get your website up and running as fast as possible, take the time to review it prior to launch.
Also, once online, it’s good practice to regularly recheck every page to ensure it still works just as good as the day it went live.
0 Comments