The Only Website Checklist You Will Ever Need

When you’re starting a website, there are a lot of things to think about. What design should you choose? What content should you create? How can you ensure your website is effective and user-friendly? This checklist will help take the guesswork out of creating and maintaining your website. We’ll walk through everything from setting up your domain name to optimizing your site for search engines. Why do you need a website launch checklist? This is straightforward. With a website checklist, you can make sure that you’ve covered all of the important bases before launching. It’s a valuable tool for streamlining your website process and ensuring that everything is taken care of in an organized and timely manner. Ultimate website launch checklist #1 Set your goals Before you launch your website, you need to establish your motivation for doing so. What are you hoping to achieve with your website? Are you looking to make it part of your sales strategy for your products or services? Do you want to generate leads? Perhaps increase your ecommerce business valuation? Once you know your goals, you can start to develop a plan to achieve them. This will make it easier for you to stay on track with creating a website that is tailored to your objectives and optimized for success. Starting without a goal, or a plan is like starting a journey without knowing where you want to go – so you might want to admit here that you don’t have a goal yet. #2 Choose a domain name Domain names are like the address of your new website. They're how people find you online. And, if you don't already have one, it’s the first step you need to take. So head over to a domain name registrar and pick one that will best represent your website. Remember that your URL also has an impact on how you will be perceived by search engines. With that being said, ensure that it's straightforward and memorable. This will also impact your website accessibility. Let's assume that you’re creating a website for people with visual impairments. In this case, you should prioritize domain names that are easy to spell and pronounce. #3 Set up hosting You’ve got your domain name all sorted? Well done you! The next step is to set up web hosting. This will ensure that your website is live and accessible for people to access 24/7, and that's exactly what you'd expect, isn't it? The better hosting you have, the more reliable your website will be. As such, take the time to choose a hosting provider that offers good uptime and customer support (e.g., via live chat) by researching different providers, their offerings, and the opinions of existing users. Your website launch checklist wouldn't be complete without web hosting, so don't skip this step. #4 Pick a web building platform There are many different platforms available for designing and building websites if you don't have the technical skills to build one from scratch. Among website builders, you can use is WebWave. Hundreds of website-building solutions may look the same at first, but with WebWave you can craft a truly awesome new site. It's like taking the canvas from Photoshop, adding layers from Figma and merging it with Canva to create your own designs and page layouts. Don't settle for what other builders have to offer – unleash your creativity with WebWave! If you've ever imagined having your own personal online domain, look no further than WebWave! With its easy drag-and-drop website builder, you can design a beautifully unique new site from the ground up. Even if you're not web design savvy, don't worry! WebWave also offers plenty of templates for you to choose from – allowing you to customize and modify site pages whatever way works best for you. No coding required! WebWave is like having your very own website designing and hosting dream team right at your fingertips – so why wait any longer? Start creating stunningly stylish web pages today with WebWave's intuitive platform – and get ready for your website launch with a bang. Create a website that looks good no matter the device— desktop, tablet, mobile devices and more. With this responsive website builder, you can tailor your web pages to any device quickly and easily. No more having to hand-tweak code for each device. Just make all the adjustments you need in one place for a perfectly responsive website that sets you apart from your competitors. Put an extra swish in your site so everyone can check out your business with ease and get only positive user experience from the first click. You can use it both for your new site or existing site, so you can easily add a few web design elements to existing sites and freshen up their look. #5 Design your website Taking the launch of any website seriously is essential for success, but when it comes to designing, organization is key. Take an organizational approach and create a “pre-launch checklist” for yourself and your team. Planning ahead is the cornerstone of launching smoothly, whether you’re building a new website or improving an existing one. Start by brainstorming ideas, setting realistic timelines and making sure each part of the process works together seamlessly before moving on to the next task. Finally, have some fun as you go along. Inject a bit of wittiness into your content and don’t be afraid to play around with web design elements that make sense for your brand. Embrace storytelling with colors and images; It will bring life to your project and increase user engagement significantly. Above all else, remember to take it step-by-step while still maintaining an unwavering commitment to excellence. If it's a brand new website, it's probably a wise idea to create a brandbook with guidelines for your designs and content. These guidelines should be easy to follow, ensuring that your team is always in sync with your desired brand identity. Also, don't forget that your new site should be optimized not only for search engines, but also for mobile devices. Adaptive design will help you reach more potential customers. #6 Write the content The text that appears on your website pages can make or break the success of your project. Poorly written content will only hurt your efforts and can be a turn-off for potential customers, so think about your target audience and the message you want to convey to them. Take the time to craft compelling content that is accurate, concise, and communicates your message effectively. Great content such as ebooks or instructional videos can even earn you passive income. If you’re feeling stuck, research ideas and write down your thoughts before beginning to write. If writing isn’t your strong point, there are plenty of resources available to help you create high-quality content for your website. Alternatively, you could always hire a professional copywriter to do the job for you, if your budget allows this, of course. Start now -> Content should also be SEO optimized (yet more on that in a second). Don't forget about title tags, video files (e.g. evergreen webinars), meta descriptions, or social media handles in each blog post – this will have quite an impact on how your site appears in search results too. In this stage, it's worth choosing the right content management system you will proceed with. Double check if it allows you to manage content properly, for example in terms of security and backups. #7 Optimize for search engines If you want people to be able to easily find your website, you need to optimize it for search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of making design your website in such a way that makes it easy for them to find and index your content, as well as rank it higher when people type in relevant search terms. There are many factors that go into SEO, including optimizing your meta tags and descriptions, creating unique content, using keywords strategically throughout, and adding relevant images with alt tags, as well as a meta description, XML sitemap, or a tracking code. Most SEO plugins and web crawlers will help you identify potential SEO issues, so be sure to review them and fix any problems if necessary. However, don't forget to keep your content unique and interesting at the same time – it's crucial for technical SEO implementation and Google Ranking factors. It's also worth mentioning that SEO is an ongoing process, so it's important to constantly review your website for any errors, internal links, broken link issues, or outdated content. It's not a one-off – even if you already have "done it all" on an existing website, regular maintenance is essential to get the best out of SEO techniques. Don't forget about Google Search Console! It will allow you to measure and monitor the performance of your site and make sure that search engines are able to access it. By following these simple steps, you’ll be well on your way to launching a successful website in no time! With an effective checklist, thoughtful pre-launch planning, and polished content, you. #8 Conduct testing Once you have all the pieces in place, it’s time to verify that every aspect of your website is functioning as it should be. Test your website on different devices, browsers, and operating systems to make sure it appears correctly and runs as smoothly as possible on all of them. Having a staging site is a great way to test before the website goes live, making sure everything is up-to-date and ready for website launch. Usability testing on an ecommerce website could, for example, show you broken links, missing meta descriptions, broken social media handles, or non-functional SSL certificates. And, for Wordpress sites, it could uncover missing title tags, contact pages that don't appear in search engine results, or other off page SEO issues. Look out for any bugs or errors in the code, and make sure all of your links are working properly. Check the speed of your website as well – if it takes too long to load, chances are people won’t stick around. According to research, over half of all web users expect a website to load in three seconds or less, and a quarter abandon a site that takes six seconds to do so. #9 Rethink backups Make sure you have a backup plan in place. Backing up your site regularly will help protect your data – and if you think about it, it’s like protecting your website’s health. There are a number of different methods you can use to back up your site, so consider which one would work best for you and ensure that you set a reminder to run the backup regularly. It's a crucial step for your website checklist, as even the best, most secure websites can face unforeseen issues, and losing your data is something you want to avoid at all costs. The only website checklist you will ever need #10 Implement security measures No website is immune to security risks such as ransomware attacks, and your site could be vulnerable if not secured properly even with all the best practices in place. As such, it's recommended to take the necessary steps to protect your website as much as possible from any malicious attacks. Update your CMS with the latest patches, install and monitor your SSL certificate, use strong passwords with multi-factor authentication, and set up a firewall to shield your data. Also keep an eye on your server logs, as they can help you detect any suspicious activities and alert you of potential security threats. A new site can be vulnerable to malware and other online threats, so ensure you take necessary steps to protect your data. More: https://webwave.me/blog/website-checklist