Website Launch Checklist for a Successful Website Debut

Launching a new website can be as exciting as it is challenging. Whether it's a personal blog, a corporate platform, or an e commerce site, every website launch demands a careful approach to ensure success right from the start.

Planning Your Website Launch

Understanding the Basics

As users, we use websites every day. Every website has certain elements, which make it possible for it to exist on the internet. The bare minimum you need to launch a website is having a:

• Domain Name: Your digital address that visitors will use to find your site.
• Hosting: A service that stores your website data and makes it accessible on the internet.
• Content Management System (CMS): Platforms like WordPress and Wix that help you manage and publish your content.

It is good to research different providers and the costs associated with your choices. Choosing a domain name can often cost thousands, so vet investments.

Pre Launch Strategies

Before launching your website, you should plan for it to ensure the process will go smoothly and that in the case of an issue, there is a sound backup plan. Ideally, you would start planning before even starting building your site, as it can save you countless hours of rework. The key focus points you should plan for are:

• Functional Goals: Identify the primary purpose of your website whether it's to sell products, showcase a portfolio, or provide information. The functional goal of your website should dictate both the design and choice of service providers.
• Target Audience: Understand who your website is for and what needs it should fulfil.
• SEO Strategy: Keywords, meta descriptions, and SEO friendly URLs should be planned out to improve your site's visibility from day one. These elements should be present in your social media content, marketing materials and overall design.

Choose the Right Structure

Your website needs to serve users, and if you want the users to stay, it needs to serve them well. A well structured website helps in user navigation and SEO performance. It should contain the following:

• Essential Pages: Ensure your website has at least a homepage, about page, and contact page.
• Content Volume: For SEO purposes, a larger site with rich, quality content is beneficial. Even so, start with what you can manage without compromising content quality.
• Scalability: Design your site architecture with scalability in mind, allowing for additional pages and content as your site grows.

Thinking about and planning for the above will save you time and money later on.

Key Website Pages

When users find your website, they are likely to land on a few key pages first. Every page is important, but these pages deserve extra attention:

• Homepage: Often the first page visited, should clearly communicate what your site is about and guide visitors to other sections.
• Contact Page: This page is critical for user engagement and inquiries.
• Privacy Policy and Terms of Service: This page is required for compliance and trust building.

Design & Setup

Review Your Design

Do you want to make a good first impression? Your website's design should reflect your brand and appeal to your target audience. Key components of this are:

• Consistent Branding: Use logos, colour schemes, and layouts across your website that align with your brand identity.
• Responsive Design: Ensure the design works seamlessly on various devices, including smartphones and tablets.

These few technical considerations are necessary for performance and user experience:

• Browser Compatibility: Check that your site looks good and functions well across all major browsers.
• Image improvement: Compress images to modern image formats like .webp to reduce load times without sacrificing quality.
• Security: HTTPS is mandatory for protecting your users and improving SEO.

Once you have done the above, it is time to test and optimise.

Testing and Enhancement

Setting Up Analytics

It is important to know your traffic, content efficiency, and positioning. You should install tools like Google Analytics to monitor how visitors interact with your site. This data is precious for ongoing enhancement.

Testing User Experience

Is your website easy to navigate? It is time to perform user experience testing. You should at the minimum test the following:

• Navigation: Test the site's navigation to ensure that it is intuitive and functional.
• Accessibility: Ensure that your website is accessible to all users, including those with disabilities.

Legal Compliance

Remember that you have legal compliance laws to follow. Abide by relevant privacy laws by including a GDPR compliant privacy policy if you're operating in or targeting users in the EU. Put the required terms and conditions on your website.

Final Pre Launch Checks

Congratulations! If you have gone through all the previous steps, you are now very close to launching a professional website. It is time to ensure that every element of your website works harmoniously:

• Content Review: Proofread all copy for errors and ensure that all media is properly licensed and credited.
• Functionality Test: Perform thorough testing of all interactive elements like forms and shopping carts.
• Perform an SEO Audit: This can help you identify issues that may have limited your visibility on search engines such as Google, resulting in missed value opportunities for new audiences. We have an easy to use SEO audit tool that can help you identify these issues.

Launching a website is not a small task, but with this checklist, you're well on your way to making a successful debut. Remember, a website is never truly finished, it will evolve and grow as your business does.