You are finally ready to bring your business online with a new swanky website. But before you announce the world of this new venture of yours, it is very important to make sure everything is as it should be. Remember the saying, “First impression is the last impression”. It is a lasting impression if not the last. So, here’s a Website Launch Checklist for you to help you prepare for a smooth and successful launch of your website.
Website Launch Checklist
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Test all Links
This is one of the first and most basic steps before launch. Make sure you test every link and verify that it is taking the user where you want him/her to go. Broken links not only are bad for user experience, they are even worse for your website’s search engine rankings. Search engines do not take kindly to the broken links and this may adversely affect the ranking of your website. If you have a large website, there are several online tools available to do this for you quickly.
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Proofread your Content
Next, make sure you proofread all the text on the website including that on images. It is common, for unsuspecting errors to creep in while adding the content to pages. You should check for spelling mistakes as well as grammatical mistakes. Any such mistakes leave a bad impression on your users and search engines also lower the quality ranking of your website. It is advisable to ask someone else to do the proof reading since it’s easy for oneself to pass over such mistakes.
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Optimize your website Images
Use of large file size images can considerably slow down the page load speed of your website. And with ever decreasing attention span of users, if your website does not load quickly users tend to move on to next. Make sure all images on your website are optimized for file size. Also, do not forget to add ‘alt’ and ‘title’ tags to all your images. These meta tags provide context to the search engines and help in your website ranking.
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Preview your website on Mobile Devices
One of the most important things to do before you announce your website to the world is to test it on mobile devices. Today, almost 90% of internet users use mobile devices like smartphones and tablets to browse the net. So, make sure your website is responsive and renders perfectly on all major mobile devices. Mobile ready websites are also ranked higher by most search engines.
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Test all the Forms
One of the most important check is to make sure all the forms on your website, whether they are contact forms, search boxes or RFI forms are working correctly. Test them and double test them, because these forms are the medium which users will interact with your site or contact you.
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Test Social Media Links
No website is complete without links to social media links today. Before you invite the world to view your website, make sure your social media pages are complete and properly linked from the website. There are two types of social media links, follow and share. Use the appropriate links in different places on your website and make sure all these links are working. Follow links are usually in the footer or header of the pages, where as share links are place with the content you want your users to share like products or blog posts. Also, make sure you check the preview of your social media share images. These are the images and content which will be shared on the social media platforms, you have to make sure they are in correct format and attractive.
Above are some very basic checks to verify your website is ready for the world to view. If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave a comment below or contact us.
Know more about why every Business needs a website and what all is required for a website?