If you and your website developer have done your jobs well, people who visit your site should find the process of getting information or taking actions (like purchasing a product) almost effortless. The website essentially takes them by the hand and guides them from section to section or page to page, ensuring that their visit is productive and that there’s a wonderful simplicity to the interaction.
Of course, you know that getting your website to the point where it can do this is anything but simple. It takes a significant amount of time, effort, and careful consideration to create a highly effective site. There are dozens (and dozens) of tasks that must be addressed along the way.
The juggling act is well worth it, of course, when your new website gives your business a powerful boost and a clear competitive advantage. But the point here is that there are lots of moving parts, and that means you need to be very intentional about how you confirm that your website is ready to launch.
Steps to Ensure Your Website Helps Take Your Business to the Next Level
For your new website to be effective, it has to meet many technical and user experience requirements. You can ensure that it does by working through the steps below attentively and methodically.
- Check your SSL certificate. What’s called a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate confirms your website’s identity and allows you to ensure that secure data transfer is possible. The “HTTPS” in front of your website address is an indicator that it’s secure.
- Prepare for 404 errors. This type of error message isn’t common with new websites, but it can be displayed if, for example, a user types a URL incorrectly. It’s important to have a message that clearly and concisely explains what happened and helps the user get to a working page.
- Test site navigation, including links. Careful development of your site will help ensure that the navigation works as designed and that there are no broken links. But you should still click on every navigation option and link of any kind (text and image) to ensure they all function properly. There are tools that can do this for you, but they should be used in addition to—not instead of—your site review.
- Ensure a backup solution is in place. Make sure that automated backups are in place when you launch. Issues happen, but they can be a lot less damaging when backups are in place. Automated backups might be provided by a website hosting platform or you can use a third-party solution.
- Confirm you’re on the latest version of your CMS. Having a content management system in place makes your life easier. It also simplifies the process of getting fresh content onto your site regularly, which makes the search engines happy. Be sure you’re on the current version of your tool of choice to avoid security issues.
- Ensure that your website meets all legal requirements. There are many rules and regulations regarding websites, from accessibility by people with disabilities (not to mention the moral obligation here), to the licensing of plugins, to the handling of sensitive information like credit card data, to alerting visitors that you use cookies, and many others. It’s a good idea to get insights from a lawyer who specializes in this area before your site goes live.
- Look into AMP integration. Google has a framework called Accelerated Mobile Pages that seeks to help companies develop better websites, particularly as viewed from mobile devices. Adhering to these guidelines can help your site appear above organic search results. AMP isn’t ideal for all types of websites, but it’s something to discuss with your web development company.
- Review your XML sitemap and all URLs. This type of file, which can be produced by most SEO plugins, tells search engines what to index on your site. It must have the complete and correct information.
- Generate a robots.txt file. This file guides search engines as they “crawl” your site to learn about it. It’s important to have one in place.
- Add metadata and schema markup wherever you can. As you can tell from the two items above, it’s critical to the success of your site that search engines can easily understand your web pages. Metadata and schema markup help with that. For example, schema markup enables your content to show up in search results as what are called rich snippets—expanded results with details the searcher can see without opening the page but that demonstrate your expertise.
- Ensure the site is free of technical SEO errors. Here again, you simplify the job of search engines when you eliminate these types of errors. There are many tools you can use to, for example, ensure that your meta titles and meta descriptions are all unique, which is something the search engines expect.
- Ensure your website content supports user needs and your goals. On every page of your website and in every section, ask yourself two questions: 1) What does a visitor need here? 2) What do we want them to do here? If you give them what they’re looking for, they'll have a more positive experience. And if you provide a call to action (CTA) wherever one is appropriate you will, too—meaning you’ll get more people to take actions that further your business objectives. For example, saying “Sign up now to receive helpful updates about our products and services.” will help grow your list of people to target with your outreach efforts.
- Proofread every page of your site. You’ve worked hard to create clear, concise, and compelling verbiage for your web pages. Don’t let typos, grammar mistakes, or inconsistencies in your content create a negative impression of your site and your company. To be sure—it’s hard to completely eradicate these issues! But the cleaner and more consistent your copy is, the better your business looks to customers and prospects.
- Create and link to social media profiles. Having a presence on the right social media platforms can help increase awareness of your company and offerings. To maximize that benefit, you should have accounts in place and link to them from your website when you launch it.
Don’t “Set It and Forget It”: Important Post-Launch Activities for Your Website
You’ve created and launched a website that’s proving to be essential to your operations and the overall success of your business. Don’t let the value of your site dwindle over time. Many of the steps above should be performed periodically going forward.
For example, you should use analytics to ensure that visitors continue to get what they need from the site. You should also confirm that your site is being backed up regularly. And, if you’re continually adding fresh content, as you should, you need to confirm that it’s clear, concise, free of typos, and not introducing any bad links or navigation issues.
Ensuring your site is polished and ready for launch is crucial. Then, keeping your website tuned-up is an ongoing effort but one that helps ensure you’re maximizing its value to your customers and your company.
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