Website Launch Checklist

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You’ve put in the hard work creating your website and you’ve got it almost to the point where you’re ready to launch your website. Before you hit PUBLISH, make sure you have completed these last minute, often overlooked, details.

CHANGE YOUR FAVICON:

Favi-what? This is the little icon that appears on a tab in your browser. This may seem super minor and insignificant, but it’s just one detail that can set you apart from the crowd. Think about if someone were researching photographers and they have about 10 tabs opened up. Instead of having to click on each tab to find your website again, they will easily be able to find the right tab and quickly go back and find what they are looking for.

UPDATE YOUR COPYRIGHT DATE:

There’s nothing worse than going to a website and seeing Copyright 2018. It makes you question if the business is even still operating. Before you launch your website, make sure that you update the year on your footer and set a reminder every year to change the date.

TEST OUT FORMS:

Find all of your forms on your website and test them out. Fill in each line for each form and send it. First of all, you want to make sure it’s connected to your email. How awful would it be if people were filling out your form and it was going no where?

You also want to make sure that the email you get from the form makes sense to you. You don’t want to get an email with a bunch of words that don’t make sense without having any context.

LINK YOUR LOGO TO YOUR HOMEPAGE:

People have been trained over the years that by clicking on the logo on a website, it will take them to the homepage. There are times when you should try to make your website different than others – this is not that time. Don’t confuse users by linking it to something different or nothing at all. You will end up with a confused user and thus you may lose them.

CHECK YOUR LINKS:

This isn’t an uncommon thing to do before hitting publish, but make sure all of your links on every single page are going where they’re supposed to go. Don’t forget your all of those links in your footer.

ADD ALT TEXT TO YOUR PHOTOS:

Alt text, also alternative text, is used within HTML code to describe the appearance and function of an image on a page. This is great for SEO, but it’s also including the visually impaired audience. Alt text allows screen readers to read information out loud to those who are not able to see very well. Don’t let your website be the only one that has left out this group on your website.

KEYWORD RESEARCH:

This could be a whole blog post in itself and definitely have it on the list to do! When you type into a search engine, they start what is called crawling around the internet searching for what they think is the best information on your topic. The search engine will be looking for specific keywords that match up to what the user has typed into the search bar.

In order to show up near the top of search engines, you need to make sure you have the right keywords not only in your content, but in the backend of your website as well. How do you find these keywords you may ask?

There are a lot of great keyword research tools out there to see what people are searching for regarding your topic of expertise (like THIS ONE). You can certainly pay for these tools or sign up for a free trial, but you can also simply use Google to help. By using Google’s auto populate search function, you can type in a single word that describes your offer and Google will come up with popular searches using those words. Take these words that show up and sprinkle them throughout your website.

Don’t launch your website before you go through these seemingly minor, but SUPER important details. If going through this list is making you feel overwhelmed, don’t worry – I got you! Send me a message and we can talk about making your life super easy, while creating a website that not only looks great, but converts your audience into high paying customers!