Here is an excellent article that gives a Checklist of items you should use when you set up a new website.  I agree with the author.  Even if you have an "old" website these items are essential.  Credit to the Author is at the bottom of the article.

A great read.  Enjoy!

-Loren

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Stop! Before you push your fledgling site from the nest, here are 8 simple steps to ensure a successful launch.

In fact even if your web site is already live, there is no harm in going thru the checklist.

Marketing Value for You – Value for Your Web Clients

The 8 Point Pre Flight Checklist can easily be turned into a spreadsheet based checklist and applied to all your new sites. Then after all checks are complete, you can mail the checklist to your new site owner(s). This small marketing effort will demonstrate to your new customers that you are serious about giving them value for the money that they just spent on their new site.

The 8 Point Pre Flight Checklist

1. Page Title (the very first line in your browser)

From a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) point of view, this is the most important piece of text on any web page. Check each page and make sure that:

Remember that the first 60 odd characters of your title text is what really counts. Remove all unnecessary stop words like and, the, a etc.

Important:  as part of your title check, it is also a good idea to check that each page’s keywords and description text are loaded.

2. Cross Browser Testing

It is surprising how often a user will point out to you that one of your sites does not work properly in such and such a browser. I once had a client with a site that did not work at all in Firefox. He took a year before giving us the go-ahead to fix it, because he was not too concerned about Firefox (lol!).

There are two ways to do cross browser testing.

i)  You can use a cross browser test system (various are available) – we use crossbrowsertesting.com

ii)  You can do the task manually after loading the various browsers onto your PC.

At very least check your site in Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox and Chrome. Go thru all links and check all pages work as advertised. Don’t forget to check any pages that have forms with validation.

(If you have the time check multiple versions of the browsers – like IE 7 and IE

3. Check Links

It is best to make use of an automated link checker tool, such as the free W3C Link Checker too. The tool can be found at http://validator.w3.org/checklink. After pointing it at your site (you can usually ignore the options), it will detect and check all links and then return with a report of all broken or redirected links.

You can also of course, as part of the above (Cross Browser test) – manually click on each and every link on the site to make sure that they open properly.

4. Check Forms Work

Check all contact forms actually work. This means that the validation works and that the requisite emails get fired off and arrive in the correct mailboxes. Most forms send a copy of the input to the site owner/webmaster/support person and also a thank you to the person who filled in the form.

Make sure that this process works. There WILL be a war with your client if contact mails are not firing as they should be.

5. Proofread All Content

Try and re-read all text content on the site. Check for misspellings and syntax errors.

(If you are the site owner, now is a good time to make sure all the words make sense and do try to cut out any text that looks superfluous. Less is always more with text)

6. Sitemap

The site should be using an automated site map creation script. Although it is possible to do this manually, this is not advisable. Manual site maps quickly become a high maintenance and are prone to unnecessary errors.

Check that the sitemap works.  Look to see that all your pages appear in the automated XML output.

7. Analytics Code

Make sure that any code required for the analysis of web stats is loaded on every page. Also make sure that the stats are actually being collected by checking to see if your testing gets recorded.

Google Analytics is a good system to use. It is low cost (free!) and produces brilliant results. Irrespective of your choice of analysis system – make sure it is working and recording stats.

8. Favicon

The site icon is an important part of the visual branding of your site. (It is often found as favicon.ico in the root folder of a site) Check to see if it is showing. This is a small but important part of a site’s branding, which also appears as part of the site bookmark in most browsers.

Suggested Options

1)  Add the site to Google Webmaster Tools (also Bing), there are many tools that deliver great value that are included in the tools.

2) List the site in various important directories. Especially Google and Yahoo and any popular local directories.
 

Tags: Blog Optimization, favicon.ico, online learning, publishing, SEO, website

This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 7:18 pm and is filed under Technology, Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.