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Written by Larry Dearing
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Saturday, 27 March 2010 11:05 |
Everyone seems to have a checklist for getting a website ready for launch. I thought I would take a look at it from a common sense perspective of making the website work both for the all important visitor and from a backend administrative perspective as well. In this first of two parts, I'll be looking at a few items you may want to double check or consider. I've tried not to be too obvious about things everyone should know like checking your grammar and spell checking. Once you think you're good to go, this may serve as a double check.
Most of these items are problems I often encounter when visiting websites. Some are minor, some are more detrimental to the usability and enjoyment of a website. Remember, your website is your best foot forward and where your visitors are experiencing your brand on their terms.
Have You Checked All Your Links?
Keeping a website's links current and "alive" can be an ongoing challenge for the best of webmasters. However your initial launching should be fairly easy to have right. Make sure both your internal (on-site) and external links are all good and working as you expect. Visitors are often disappointed when they were interested enough in a link to click on it and a page doesn't load. When launching a new site or a makeover, you may only have one chance to win over a new guest into a returning visitor. Remember, best foot forward.
Are All Your Sections Completed?
This is one of my pet peeves. Too many sites are developed "live" with dead links and "coming soon" sections throughout the website. Would you go to a meeting or presentation with only half of your material completed? Again, you may only have one chance to turn a guest into a return visitor. Your audience needs to see real content in the final form. For many visitors, under construction, or coming soon pages, might as well mean never.
Do Your Email Addresses Work?
So you've decided to publish a contact or information email address on your website. Great idea. Have you actually tested it to make sure mail flows to it the way you want it to? If a visitor is interested enough to send you an email, they will certainly be disappointed and assume you're not serious if they never receive a reply. It may have simply been because the email address didn't actually work and you never received their query or message. A moment testing here is well worth the confidence it affords.
Do All Your Gadgets Work?
Websites are getting more and more feature packed with various whistles and bells. It's very frustrating or at least very unimpressive to visit a site and the flash, or rotating graphics don't load. If you are using any such gadgets on your website, make sure they work as intended, and check them with more than one browser. Make sure any tab or slider modules are working. Make sure any "exploding" picture modules display not only the thumbnail, but the larger target picture zoom as well. Any and all on-site forms should be checked to assure they not only load, but submit and transmit property. The list of options is too large to address here, but now you're thinking along the right lines.
Are You Using a Favicon?
Favicons are those little logo graphics that show up in the address bar for many websites. They also appear in your list of bookmarks/favorites in most browsers. What do they actually do? Nothing really, they're just part of the overall professionalism, branding, and best foot forward look you want for your website. There's no reason to pay a lot to get them done, there are many free on-line resources. We use html-kit.com exclusively. Most CMS/Blog type systems have instructions and places to place your favicon once it's created. If you need to do it manually in the code, html-kit.com also offers a how-to.
Though this is certainly not a comprehensive preparation list for a website launch, hopefully it's gotten you to double check or rethink a few elements of your site and their ultimate importance to your visitor's experience and on your brand. We work hard building our sites and driving visitors to our little piece of the web. Let's make sure we make the absolute most of it. In part 2 we will take a look at some of the back end elements that are often missed or passed over lightly. Though not visitor oriented, they too can affect how your site is presented and found on the web.
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