Is your web development company going through a checklist before launching your new website?
– By #RSA
T minus 5 seconds to Launch. In 5…4…3…2…1…we have liftoff.
Now listen, launching a rocket into space might take a bit more calculations than launching a website, but it is still a tedious project that involves a lot of planning and preparation. Before launching your website, make sure your web development company is going through an extensive review and launch checklist to make sure when your new website goes live it goes off without a hitch.
One of the best parts about working with a web development company to make your new business website is that you have a team of professionals by your side every step of the way. Sure, you can build a free website with solutions like Wix or WordPress easily enough, but that doesn’t guarantee it has all the functions you need. Trying to program your website to function the way you want can be a difficult, tedious process.
When you work with a web development company, like Robert Sharp & Associates, you have an entire team at your disposal to take care of everything. From conception to content development, theme design, development, and launching your website our team takes care of the hard stuff, so you can focus on running your business.
But launching a website is not as simple as pressing a button, and to make sure everything goes off without a hitch, web developers go through an extensive checklist before your site goes live.
Testing the site’s usability and setting up form recipients
One of the first and most important steps in any web launch checklist is testing the usability of your new website. This involves checking the navigation of the website on a desktop and mobile platform to make sure it is optimized and compatible with a variety of screen sizes. In addition, you should test any forms or modules that may be on your website to make sure they are not only working but easy to use for any site visitor. In addition to checking forms, make sure they are set up to filter to the correct email address. This ensures as soon as your website goes live any form submissions from potential customers will be sent to the right person. It is also important to run a browser compatibility test to ensure your website loads quickly and runs smoothly on all major web browsers.
Check for proper SEO and social media Integration
After making sure all components of your website are working perfectly, the next step is making sure the website can be found. During the content writing phase, your agency should be conducting extensive research into your industry to find relevant keywords to utilize on your website in the form of Title and Meta tags. These tags help improve your website’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO). To read more about the importance of SEO check out this blog article. Before launch, it is imperative to review each page of your site to check that all Title & Meta tags have been properly placed. This will help Google and other search engines index your website and help improve your website’s organic traffic. In addition, to double-check your SEO, your web developers should make sure your website is properly integrated with all your social media pages. This makes it easy for site visitors to navigate to your social media pages directly from your website.
Set up Tracking
Another amazing thing about working with a marketing agency is they can provide insights into how your website is performing. At RSA, we want to make sure the money our clients spend on marketing is generating a measurable ROI. This is why our web developers set up tracking on all our websites before launch. All websites developed by RSA are set up with a Google Analytics code so that our team can analyze the overall health of your website. In addition, we set up event tracking on certain pages or buttons we want users to interact with. This way we can make sure our conversion funnel is successful and make any adjustments where necessary. Before your website goes live make sure to talk with your web developer and make sure they have some sort of tracking set up to measure the overall health of your website.
Back that Thang Up and Take Care of Legal Stuff
In addition to all the programming that goes into building a website, there are also some legalities to take care of. In addition to adding a privacy policy to your website, you should also ensure your web development company has done an ADA compliance check. If you haven’t already purchased an SSL certificate make sure to purchase and implement that pre-launch. All of these things protect your site from hacking attempts, bot traffic, and even potential lawsuits. Check with your web development company about backing up your old website before it is taken down. This way if you ever need information or files from your old site you still have a way to access it.
There is a lot more technicalities that go into preparing a website for launch, but we hope this gave you a slight glimpse into the care and attention the website developers at RSA put into their work. When your site goes live, we want to make sure the first person who visits it has a seamless, positive experience.
If you are working with a web development company and they aren’t going through a launch checklist it may be time to look into a new marketing agency or speak to your web developer about the preparation they do to prepare for your site going live. Nothing is worse than spending time and money on a new site and it has issues after launch due to a step being overlooked or forgotten.
If you need a website for your new business or need a revamp of your current website, give us a call at (605) 341-5226 to speak to our team of web design professionals today!
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