5 Things To Check Before You Launch Your Website

Its finally happened. Your website is done and ready for launch. You have been dreaming about this moment for weeks and can’t wait to show your masterpiece to the world. Congratulations on the achievement but before you can introduce your site to the world there are some final checks that need to be made. This post covers 5 of the most common things which webmasters forget before launching their sites.

1. Favicon

A favicon is the small icon which you see next to your Title in the browser. Creating a favicon takes minutes and implementing it in the website or blog is straight forward. Not having a favicon is no big deal but looks unprofessional and helps with branding. The favicon is key when bookmarking because it makes it easy to quickly identify your site. Using a well designed favicon is another way to brand your site or blog.

2. Google Analytics

Every site should be using Google Analytics or a similar web analytics service. Make sure you add the tracking code before you launch your site so that you can gather information on your visitors. If you are launching a marketing campaign to help promote your new site then Google Analytics is even more important as it can be set up to track conversion rates and help you identify issues in your funnel. Google Analytics is free and takes just a few minutes to implement.

3. SEO

Many new site owners completely forget about optimizing their sites for search engines. Before you launch your site make sure you enter in your meta tag data and setup your robot.txt file. If you are clueless in regard to SEO then make sure to check out this beginners guide.

4. Test everything

Most websites today have at least one contact form and one javascript style pop up or effect. Make sure you test every link, button, form, application and scroller on your site. There is nothing more unprofessional then a broken link on a site or a form which gives an error when sending. Make sure to test your contact form thoroughly to see if its sending to the correct address with an easily identifiable subject so that you don’t dismiss it as spam.

5. View your site in all the main browsers

Your beautiful website might look perfect on Chrome but your web designer didn’t program it correctly for Firefox and Internet Explorer. Make sure you test everything again on all the other browsers and add the necessary code to correct any styling issues.

Bonus list:

6. View your site in different resolutions.

7. Let some friends play with the site to better understand usability issues.

8. Create the necessary social media profiles and link to your site.

9. Add alt tags to all your images (good for SEO reasons).

10. View your site from a smartphone.

11. Run a speed test and try and improve loading time of the site.

12. Once SEO is done, submit the site to Google with the use of a sitemap file.

If you have any other things to check before launch which I can add to the list then please mention them in the comments below.