Cross These Items Off Your List Before Launching A New Website

A vital part of launching a new website is having a checklist handy. Ideally your list should be completely checked off, signed, and dated before launch.

In this post, I will give you a glimpse into some of the items on our checklist. There is much more than can be added for each unique project, but this is a pretty general list that can apply to every project.

The Checklist

• Square away all domain and DNS information.
• Figure out the email situation so that there is no interruption.
• Make sure site can be indexed by Google. Check robots.txt file and Meta tags.
• For all contact forms, send a test to the client and make sure they respond back so you know it is working. Put their response in their file so that there is no question it was tested and confirmed.
• Validate your HTML. Don’t even do browser testing until you finish validation. Many browser issues I have come across were due to invalid markup that can easily be found with validation.
• Test in all supported browsers and devices.
• Make sure all links are SEO-friendly.
• Install spam filter on blog.
• Create HTML and XML sitemaps.
• Update Meta information such as Title and Description tags.
• Install Google Analytics on all pages. (Bonus: Set up goals and funnels)
• Set up 301 redirects (if this is a website redesign).

Post-Launch

• Redirect non-www to www.
• Create new Google Maps API key (or any API keys).
• Add account to Google Webmaster Tools and upload XML sitemap.

Bonus Checklist: E-Commerce

• Set up SSL for shopping cart.
• Create and test merchant account (Authorize.NET, Paypal, etc).
• Make sure taxes are being charged correctly.
• Figure out shipping options and make sure they are being calculated correctly.

How about you? What are some must have items on your checklist?