Avoiding Website Launch Disasters

A successful website launch can be simple or complex. The process is rarely the same each time you do it, but there are a few consistent things you should check before your next website launch to avoid disaster.

Content-related Tasks

1. Is your content free from spelling errors?
2. Is all new content in place, and has it been placed consistently? Make sure there isn’t any left over lorem ipsum latin text anywhere.
3. Has page and content formatting has been tested? Does everything flow and is it easy to read?
4. Is the content using all of the available elements provided by a style guide or design? Your design team probably had a plan for how to format and organize content on the website, make sure you’re using the correct HTML elements to get the most out of your design.
5. Have you optimized your printing stylesheet? Ask your dev team if they’ve added a print stylesheet to your website if you anticipate that people will frequently print out pages.
6. Does your footer include a copyright and a link to the site creator? It’s always nice to credit the team that built the website when you can.
7. Have you checked for broken links? The W3C offers a free Link Checker tool that makes this easy to do.

Search Engines Optimization (SEO)

1. Have you optimized your top pages metadata for search engines? Determine specific keywords you want to rank for in search engines, and optimize your pages for each individual keyword. If you don’t appear in search engines for people looking for the product or service that you provide, your website isn’t much of a sales tool.
2. Are your page titles are descriptive and SEO friendly? A title is what visitors will see when they find you in search engines, what appears at the very top of their browser window, and what is stored when they bookmark a page. Make sure your titles closely align with the content on each page in your website.
3. Do images have appropriate alt attributes? alt attributes determine the text that will appear when an image is not found, and search engines commonly take notice of these when they’re calculating your websites’ importantance.
4. Are title attributes appropriate and SEO friendly? Title attributes are displayed when a visitor hover over a given element in your website. Search engines will take notice of the descriptive and relevant text you use in your title attributes.
5. Have you added a favicon, and does it display correctly when your website is bookmarked? A favicon is the icon that display in your browser for a given website, they help visitors easily identify your brand.
6. Have you added apple touch icons to optimize for iOS users? These icons will be used when a visitor bookmarks your website on their iPad, iPhone or iPod touch.
7. Have you added opengraph metadata for optimized social media sharing? Opengraph tags will determine the title, description, image(s) and more used when visitors share a page on your website. This is a widely accepted standard and is used by the major social media websites out there like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and more.
8. Have you setup 301 redirects to your new architecture? This is very important for preserving search rankings, and rarely is the practiced carried out correctly. 301 redirects will ensure that the incoming links to your website are preserved when the address of a specific page changes.

Marketing

1. Have you compiled a list of people to contact about your new website when it launches? You spent all this money on it, you may as well show it off!
2. Make note of your analytics stats before you launch. This is tremendously helpful, and will allow you to identify any major usability flaws once you launch. If you see any spikes in bounce rate than your new website may have created a problem for your visitors. It may look nice, but at the end of the day you need to make sure that people can easily get what they came for.

Development Quality

1. Does your HTML have any major validation issues? Fixing any major validation errors now will help you avoid bugs in the future, saving time and money.
2. Does your CSS have any major validation issues? Likewise, validating your CSS is always a good idea to avoid future bugs.
3. Is your JavaScript error free? JavaScript errors can cause interaction issues on your website, it’s always a good idea to fix any errors you see in the console.
4. Have you tested your website across browsers and devices? It’s important to ensure that your new website displays & functions correctly for it’s target audience(s). I suggest using Google Analytics to determine the browsers and devices your audience uses.

Usability

1. Does your website adapt to different resolutions? If your development team used a responsive approach when building your website then it should adapt to various device resolutions automatically.
2. Have your forms have been tested and are they processed correctly? Make sure any lead generation, contact or comment forms are working properly to avoid causing your best visitors any frustration.
3. Do your forms have all of the correct required fields set? Make sure that your required fields are set, and that they are clearly flagged for users.
4. Do your forms send notifications to the correct people? Are the correct people receiving email notifications when a form is submitted. Likewise, are visitors receiving confirmation emails when they complete a form? (if necessary)
5. Is your analytics package installed and operational?
6. Do you have a friendly 404 (Page not found) page and is it informative? A 404 page is what displays when a page is not found. It’s common for visitors to hit these pages after a redesign, so it’s best to make sure that your’s has a pleasant experience that provides visitors with the details they need to find what they were looking for.

Final Details

1. Is your existing website backed up? You never know what you may need to keep.
2. Have you schedule a low-traffic time to launch? It’s always a good idea to make the switch over when the fewest people are visiting your website, just in case anything goes wrong.

In Conclusion

Launching a new website is no easy task. Ensuring a smooth launch process involves many variables. Hopefully this list help’s you launch your next incredible website, while also keeping your sanity.

What Did I Miss?

There’s a lot more that you can do to prepare for a website launch, I welcome your thoughts and advice on how to improve this checklist!

More Website Launch Resources

• Launchlist Pro
• 15 Essential Checks Before Launching Your Website
• The Ultimate Website Prelaunch Checklist
• Website Pre-Launch Checklist
• 13 Steps to a Successful Website Launch
• Website Launch Checklist
• Website Launch Checklist