There comes a point when you spend a great deal of time preparing for a website launch that everyone involved becomes eager to push it live. It's very easy to accidentally overlook small details necessary to launch your site.
Overlooking the small details only leads to more problems for you to deal with later. That's why it's critical to follow a website launch checklist and double check that you've completed the essentials.
Website Launch Checklist
Before launching your eCommerce site, be sure to double check the following 4 things:
- Review your content
- Optimize your SEO strategy
- Check your design details
- Focus on your site's functionality
Review Your Content
After you've read your content thoroughly once, go ahead and reread it. Be sure there are zero grammatical errors. There is nothing less professional than having spelling mistakes on your new site.
In addition to reviewing your page content, be sure to review all of the written content on your downloadable assets - like eBooks, videos and webinar transcripts. All of the web copy from your headers to paragraphs must be accurate and located on the correct page.
Optimize Your SEO Strategy
When examining your SEO strategy, you must do the following:
- Utilize keywords correctly
- Put meta descriptions in place
- Add alt tags to ALL of your images
Additionally, page titles are one of the most important aspects of an eCommerce website. They help visitors and search engines understand what a page is about. Take some time beforehand to match your page title with your web content.
If you are not confident in your approach to any of these things, you must go back through your site and optimize your strategy to include best practices. With an optimized strategy, you'll see improvement in your organic search rankings.
Check Your Design Details
You’ve monitored the development of your website design down to the tiniest pixel, but have you even bothered to check how it looks in other browsers? What may appear picture perfect in Chrome may look like a hot mess in Firefox.
Your site may be responsive, but that doesn't mean it will appear perfect across other platforms on the first try. Don't wait until after your website is live to discover that several other browsers are not displaying your design properly.
When checking your website design across platforms be sure to check that:
- Site pages are compatible across devices like Android, iPhone and tablets
- Site pages are compatible across browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Safari)
- All scripts are optimized
- Paragraph styles are working correctly
Focus On Your Site's Functionality
You've taken the time to set up your site, and you want your visitors to have the ability to engage with every feature. Be sure to test your website out to make sure everything works as it should.
We highly encourage interacting with your site like any visitor would. Double check that all aspects work - including form fields, social media icons, redirects and third party integrations.
Don't be afraid to ask different members of your team to test out your site, too. You'd be shocked to see how differently people navigate through our site and what places you forget to check.
Bonus Tip: Triple Check Your Analytics Tracking!
I've seen too many instances where everyone checks the four things listed above, then instantly decides to launch the site. Usually about a week later, someone realizes tracking is messed up in analytics. At that point, they've missed out on an opportunity to collect valuable data during the website launch.
Avoid messing up your data. Before launching, check that your Google Analytics tracking is set all set up so that you can accurately measure the success of your launch.
Conclusion
There are a multitude of factors to consider before a website launch. We hope you utilize this checklist to ensure you've covered the major components necessary for a successful launch.
If you're looking for help in launching your eCommerce site or would like additional website support, contact us through the form below. Our team will be happy to help set your online store up for success.
March 9, 2020 at 10:13PM
via https//www.brucedayne.com/
Miles Feldman, Khareem Sudlow
