Your site is complete and all set to be launched. But before making it live, please stop and imagine: are you currently failing to remember a couple of essential assessments in your eagerness? Here is a list of 12 things you should check out in order to making your site public:
Titles and Meta Tags in Your web pages - Web page title is not just essential for SEO, but it really informs the user exactly what a page is all about. Web page titles should preferably change with every different web page and has to relate with that page content.
Even though Meta keywords tags haven’t much significance in Search engine optimization for major search engines like Google, they should still be incorporated. Meta description is still important from SEO point of view and it should be unique on each different web page and correspond with that page content. Meta descriptions are very important simply because search engines normally show the description in search results.
Make sure to recheck your site Content - Check your site content once more just before launching your website. Ask someone to read it, if possible someone who does not know about your product or service. There’ll always be something to gain from his/her suggestions. Modify content and try to make changes, reduce, split, or add meaningful phrases to make your concept much more acceptable to first-time users.
Check dynamic texts in your site as well.
Check out your site functionality - Test your website completely prior to making it live. You should check out each and every functions or every component of your site is working correctly or not.
Some important things you should recheck:
1> Contact form
2> Subscription form
3> Site search function
4> Every widget
5> Shopping cart if you have any
6> Member login and registration page
Graceful Deterioration - See if your website performs with JavaScript turned off, since personal desktops generally have JavaScript disabled for safety measure. Also check all types of AJAX functions in your website.
Site Links - Search engines like Google hates broken links and people find them annoying. Do not just expect all of your links are just fine since they’re in the right place. Verify them before making your site live. The last thing you would want is for visitors to click on a call to action button or link and be sent straight to the 404 error page.
You could make your hyperlinks notable to the visitors by utilizing link colors that stick out against your site’s background. Be sure you code a distinct color for visited hyperlinks; you do not want users clicking on same links over and over again. Also stay away from underlining normal text that isn’t a hyperlink.
Protective Design and style - A 404 error page is going to be shown in case your site visitors ask for a webpage that doesn’t really exist. By offering a 404 error page that redirects the users to your site home page or recommends a different web page, you’re preventing visitors from leaving your website.
When you’re verifying your forms, verify by posting details that’s uncommon like letters in numeric fields of a form and the opposite way round, plenty of characters, and so on. If you find an problem on submission, an error messages should assist your site visitors to resolve inappropriate entry.
Site Sitemap - Remember to include the sitemap.xml file to the root directory of your website just before launching it. Sitemap.xml file informs major search engine spiders about webpages of your site, therefore encouraging search engines quickly index your website. The sitemap.xml file should be uploaded to the root directory of your website therefore it appears as www.your-domain.com/sitemap.xml
If you are working with WordPress blogs, install Google XML Sitemap plugin to automatically create and update your site sitemap each time you publish new article in your blog. Upload your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools to inform Google that you do have a sitemap.
Google Analytics Code – Google analytics tools can help you to find out how efficiently your website is accomplishing and converting. Google Analytics is really a favorite tool among web entrepreneurs and search engine optimizers.
RSS or atom Link - In case your web site contains a newsreel or blog, be sure you provide an RSS feed for users to sign up for your newsletter. Traditionally, a RSS feed symbol in the web browser’s address bar works, despite the fact that sidebars work too. To incorporate your RSS feed in the browser’s address bar, incorporate this code before closing the </head> tag
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=” RSS title” href=”link to your blog feed” />
Cross Browser Compatibility – Check your site on well-known web browsers like internet explorer, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari and Mozilla Firefox to make sure your site design and layout appears appropriately.
Most website designers you are aware of are trying to overcome cross-browser incompatibility as well as their designs from showing up dislodged across web browsers. But nowadays cross-browser incompatibility is really a disease of the world-wide-web that is not getting healed in the near future. For that reason, even though your site design doesn’t have to be pixel perfect throughout all browsers, it should at least appear appropriately on all web browsers.
Print Feature- Develop a print-specific style sheet to ensure that if visitors wish to print out your page’s main content material, they could instantly print from your website without needing to copy and paste the main article right into a text file to prevent site navigation and elements of design.
Fevicon - Check your site favicon is properly showing up or not. Fevicon is very important for branding. To setup your favicon you should put the following code before closing the </head> tag
<link rel=”icon” type=”image/x-icon” href=”your favicon path” />
I am a professional designer myself and I must appreciate your checklist friend.
Thanks Kushal.Gonna launch a blog in next few days.Thanks for the awesome post