Important steps to take before launching your website

Launching a new website can be exciting but it’s important not to overlook key components to a successful website launch. We understand that launching a website can be stressful, time-consuming, and can be complicated.

Whether your working with an agency or have managed to build a website yourself, all the points I’m going to mention below will still apply.

From my experience working with different clients at Eddge, I’ve put together a checklist of some of the most important aspects to make your website launch as successful as it can be. I understand that with each client, some factors may be specific to their industry however all the points mentioned below will still need to be implemented.

Functionality and user experience

This is probably one of, if not, the most important thing to review before launching your new website. It’s probably obvious however this can be overlooked.

Ensure to review each functionality component on your site, to make sure it’s working as intended. These components could be things like contact forms, lead generation forms, internal and external links, and more.

If these features are not working correctly, this will give your user a very bad experience and is a sure way to put off your user from returning to your company website.

Review All Content

This again might sound straightforward but ensuring you have the correct content on your website is crucial. I’ve visited many sites where the images and videos are not loading properly and content is being placed in the wrong areas.

It’s always a good idea to visit all the pages on your site, proofread all of your content and maybe get someone else to do this for you.

Responsive

As you’ll know, internet mobile usage is always growing. People are accessing the internet via many different devices, you can even access the internet using a fridge! So as you can imagine, people may be visiting your site with a wide variety of different screen sizes so it’s important your website is responsive.

Responsive means that your website will adjust to whatever the screen size may be. This will ensure your user will still have an amazing user experience regardless what device they may be using to view your site.

Test your site by visiting it using different devices and see if your website will adapt accordingly. You can also test this by shrinking your web browser to see if your website will adjust.

Set Up Analytics

This is important if you want to keep a track of how well your site is doing (regarding the amount of visitors etc). I always recommend using Google Analytics as this is a very powerful tool that’s free to use.

It’s also wise to generate a sitemap and submit it to the Google search console which will help Google index your page efficiently.

If you’re using WordPress, I recommend using the YoastSEO plugin which will help you with SEO as well as generate a sitemap for you.

BackUp

Before launching your site, ensure you have a backup of your site and have the right security in place. This will help if there were any attacks against your site which could lead to losing all your data. Regularly backing up your website will give you peace of mind if something goes wrong.

There are tons of more things to add to this list but I thought I’d keep it short and sweet. I will add to this list over time however I’ve mentioned a few of the key components to having a successful launch.