Did you know? Around 252,000 new websites are launched every day around the world.
So, how will you make yours get better visibility among all these numbers? By using our pre-launch website checklist!
After working hard to make your website, you’re probably excited to show it to the world. But before you put it out there, take a moment to review everything carefully.
It’s important to check your site thoroughly to make sure it gets more exposure online. This also helps you to avoid any problems later on.
This blog gives you a complete website launch checklist to help your business grow.
What is a Website Launch Checklist?
Before you launch your site for people to visit and use, you need to make sure it is perfect. A website launch checklist can help you with this. It is like a roadmap for getting your website ready to go live. This checklist contains a list of tasks you need to complete before publishing your site.
It covers everything from reviewing content and testing functionality to design consistency and search engine optimization. By following a checklist, you can catch any mistakes or issues before they become big problems.
There is one easy way to build and launch your website – by using AI website builder tools like Hocoos. All you need to do is answer eight questions, and the tool will prepare your site in 5 minutes. After that, you can use the editor to make the changes by reviewing our website launch checklist. Once you are satisfied, simply launch the site. Hocoos even takes care of hosting, domains, and security.
Website Launch Checklist – 11 Ways to Improve Visibility
Here’s a list of things you should check before you officially make your site go live. This website launch checklist has 11 tasks to do to make sure your site is perfect.
- Proofread all content
Before launching your website, it’s important to check all the written content for any mistakes. Typos can make your site look unprofessional and unreliable. You can use tools like Grammarly, which is available as a Chrome extension, to help you find punctuation, spelling, and grammar errors.
Make sure to review both the HTML files and what you see on your browser. Sometimes, items like image alt text might not be visible, or things you don’t want might be hidden using CSS.
- Double-check the design
Next, double-check the design to make sure everything looks good. You can follow this simple website launch checklist for design.
- Colors: Do you use the same colors throughout? Are they the ones that represent your brand? Did you use consistent color choices?
- Logo: Is your logo clear and updated? Does it look sharp everywhere on your site?
- Spacing: Are things evenly spaced out on your site? Do elements have enough room to breathe?
- Shadows: If you added shadows, do they all look the same? Are they the right brightness and size?
- Imagery: Are your images clear? Do they load fast? Do they all have descriptions?
- Typography: Is the text easy to read? Are the fonts consistent and logical? Do headings all look the same size?
- Optimizing the images
Using images and graphics on your website can make it more enjoyable for users and improve how it appears on search engines. But they can also change the loading speed.
That’s why it is important to optimize the images. Nowadays, many mobile devices have really clear screens, so it’s important to have good-quality pictures. Blurry images can make your site look unprofessional.
Some website builders can automatically make images smaller for devices with lower-quality screens while keeping them big for high-quality screens. This way, your pictures will look great on all devices, even if the internet is slow.
- Check the cross-device appearance
Making sure your website looks good on different devices is really important. Nowadays, there are lots of different devices with all sorts of screen sizes. Your website should work well on any screen, but it’s a good idea to check.
Navigation is a big part of how your website works. If it’s easy for people to move around your site, they’ll like it more. So, when you design your site, make sure it’s easy for people to find what they want.
Before you launch your site, try it out on a computer, phone, or tablet to make sure everything looks right on each device.
- Check cross-browser appearance
It’s important to make sure that your website works well on different web browsers after making sure that it looks good. Different browsers show websites in slightly different ways, so it’s a good idea to test your site on as many browsers as you can. Some common ones are Google Chrome and Safari, and there are others like Opera and Microsoft Edge, too. If your site only works well on one or two browsers, you might miss out on people who use other ones.
Your website should look and work the same no matter where people see it. This means everything from how it looks to how people move around should be the same on different devices and browsers.
- Test all the links
An annoying thing about link testing is that web pages often have a lot of links. It’s normal for some links to not work, but you should fix them as soon as possible so people don’t notice. Broken links can hurt your site’s search score and make it harder for people to use. Check out the menu links, social media links, bottom links, and logo links.
- Test the integrations
Integration testing is when your website works together with other apps, systems, or websites. This testing checks that all these connections are working properly. How long it takes depends on how many connections you have.
Tested features often include web forms, autoresponders, ecommerce tools for managing product listings and payments, CRMs for keeping track of interactions with customers, and CMS for creating and managing content. Top of FormIt’s a good idea to make a list of all your connections when you’re designing your site so you remember to test them later on.
- Check Meta SEO tags
Meta SEO tags help search engines understand what a website is all about by providing titles and descriptions for its pages.
Meta Title
This is the title that appears as a clickable link on search engine result pages (SERPs). It’s what users see on their browser tabs when they visit the page. A good meta title is short (under 70 characters), includes important keywords, and grabs the reader’s attention.
Meta Description
It is a short text that tells you more about the page than the title does. On SERPs, it shows up below the meta title. It should also be short (between 135 and 160 characters) and contain important keywords. It’s not just search engines that read the meta description; it’s also people.
- Make sure your domain and hosting are safe
Your domain name and servers are like the building blocks of your online brand. For your domain to properly reflect your brand, make sure it is up-to-date and renewed. Pay attention to security when sharing. People who visit your website should feel safe there because it has strong security features that keep them safe. Don’t forget that you need a safe website to manage your hosting and grow your online business.
- Check website speed
People expect websites to load fast. Conduct speed tests to make sure your site loads quickly. A fast website isn’t just nice—it keeps visitors happy. Who doesn’t love a website that loads in a flash? Fast-loading pages make your audience happy and eager to explore everything your site offers.
- Don’t forget analytics
Website analytics are really important for understanding how well your website is doing. Before you launch your site, it’s a good idea to connect it to an analytics tool. Google Analytics is a free tool that’s easy to set up and works well with platforms like Webflow. With Google Analytics, you can see how many people visit your site and how they interact with it.
Having good analytics can help with SEO, which is all about making your site rank higher in search engine results. If your site is slow or hard to use, it might not rank as well. People expect websites to load quickly, so if yours is slow, they might leave without doing anything. Search engines also don’t like slow sites, so they might rank yours lower.
Luckily, there are tools available to help you understand your website’s performance better. You can read our article about the best website performance test tools to learn more about using analytics to improve your site.
Conclusion
Using a website launch checklist can help you catch things you might forget. After you’ve checked everything off, you might still need to make some changes to the website. Make sure to go through the checklist a few days before you plan to launch. This gives you time to make any changes without having to delay the launch date, especially if you’ve already told your customers when it will be ready.