A checklist for website launches
Category:Headline,ProjectmanagementThe launch of a website is a very intense period. Every step taken in the project have to come together at that point. Everything has to be correct. Still to often it goes wrong.
The reasons for the failure of such a process are multiple. One thing that happens most is that people tend to panic because everything HAS to go well. That means stress. And when there is Stress people tend to forget things.
At those times its handy to have a checklist. Simply cross off the things you have to do, you won’t forget a thing. The owners of the website "BoxUK" are helping us with that. They published the checklist below. It’s a pretty complete checklist. For some projects things can be cut for others things have to be added. But in general it is the ‘ultimate checklist’.
| Pre-Launch | |
| Content and Style | |
| Typography and layout | |
| Check for incorrect punctuation marks, particularly apostrophes, quotation marks and hyphens/dashes | |
| Check headings for where you could potentially use ligatures | |
| Check for widow/orphan terms in important paragraphs | |
| Spelling and grammar | |
| Consistency | |
| Capitalisation (especially of main headings) | |
| Tense/Style of writing | |
| Recurring/common phrases (e.g. ‘More about X’ links) | |
| Variations in words (e.g. Websites vs Web Sites, or UK vs US spelling) | |
| Treatment of bulleted lists (e.g. periods or commas at end of each item) | |
| Check for hard-coded links to staging domain (i.e. ensure all links will change to ‘live’ URL/domain when site is launched) | |
| Ensure no test content on site | |
| Check how important pages (e.g. content items) print | |
| For re-designs, ensure important old/existing URLs are redirected to relevant new URLs, if the URL scheme is changing | |
| Check all ‘Hidden Copy’ (e.g. alt text, transcriptions, text in JavaScript functions) | |
| Standards and Validation | |
| Accessibility | |
| HTML validation | |
| JavaScript validation | |
| CSS validation | |
| Search Engine Visibility, SEO and Metrics | |
| Page Titles are important; ensure they make sense and have relevant keywords in them. | |
| Create metadata descriptions for important pages. | |
| Check for canonical domain issues (e.g. variations in links to http://site.com http://www.site.com http://www.site.com/index.html should be reduced to a single consistent style) | |
| Ensure content is marked-up semantically/correctly (<h1>, etc.) | |
| Check for target keyword usage in general content | |
| Check format (user/search engine friendliness) of URLs | |
| Set up Analytics, FeedBurner, and any other packages for measuring ongoing success | |
| Create an XML Sitemap | |
| Configure Google Webmaster Console and Yahoo! Site Explorer | |
| Functional Testing | |
| Check all bespoke/complex functionality | |
| Check search functionality (including relevance of results) | |
| Check on common variations of browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome etc.), version (6, 7, 2.2, 3.1 etc.) and platform (Windows, OSX, Linux) | |
| Check on common variations of Screen Resolution | |
| Test all forms (e.g. contact us, blog comments), including anti-spam features, response emails/text, etc. | |
| Test without JavaScript, Flash, and other plug-ins | |
| Check all external links are valid | |
| Security/Risk | |
| Configure backup schedule, and test recovery from backup. | |
| Protect any sensitive pages (e.g. administration area) | |
| Use robots.txt where necessary | |
| Security/Penetration test | |
| Turn-off verbose error reporting | |
| Check disk space/capacity | |
| Set-up email/SMS monitoring/alerts (e.g. for errors, server warnings); consider internal and external monitoring services | |
| Performance | |
| Load test | |
| Check image optimisation | |
| Check and implement caching where necessary | |
| Check total page size/download time | |
| Minify/compress static (JavaScript/HTML/CSS) files | |
| Optimise your CSS: use short image paths; make full-use ‘cascading’ nature of CSS, etc. | |
| Check correct database indexing | |
| Check configuration at every level (Web server, Database, any other software e.g. Content Management System) | |
| Configure server-based logging/measurement tools (e.g. database/web server logging) | |
| Finishing Touches | |
| Create custom 404/error pages | |
| Create a favicon | |
| Post-Launch | |
| Marketing | |
| Social Marketing: Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Facebook, Stumbleupon, etc. | |
| Submit to search engines | |
| Set-up PPC/Google Adwords where necessary | |
| Check formatting of site results in SERPs | |
| Ongoing | |
| Monitor and respond to feedback (direct feedback, on Social Media sites, check for chatter through Google, etc.) | |
| Check analytics for problems, popular pages etc. and adjust as necessary | |
| Update content | |
PS Are you interested in a workshop on how you can manage a project like this? Get in touch!
