5 Areas to Check Before Launching Your Website

So you have a shiny new website waiting to be released into the wild? Before you push the almighty button to go LIVE, you should step back and make sure its user-ready. There are currently over 1 Billion websites on the internet. Seventy new domains are registered and 571 new website are created every minute online. How do you make sure your website stands out?

Instead of worrying about the what-ifs, here is list of areas to check before launching a website – from a QA Guy.

1. Design

Take the necessary steps to ensure that the site design is pixel perfect. If you have a responsive website, you need to check the design across multiple devices. Your site should be looking good not just on a desktop, but also on laptops, tablets, and mobile phones.

Website pages are compatible across browsers (IE 7 8, 9 and 10, Firefox, Chrome, Safari).
Website pages are compatible across devices (Android, iPhone, tablets).
CSS/HTML is properly validated.
Scripts are optimized across web pages.
Images are optimized across web pages.
CSS is optimized across web pages.
Paragraph styles are working properly (headers, lists, block quotes).

2. Context

When giving a critical eye to the pages within the site, ask:

Why would I visit this page?

Is the content ready for visitor?

Does the page address the audience?

Your page title is the most important element for SEO and is also important so that users know what’s on the page. Make sure it changes on every page and relates to that page’s content.
Check for proper spelling, typos, and grammar site-wide.

3. Functionality

Take some time to test and validate all of the different features on your website. Lead generation forms, social sharing, CRM integration, and any other technology should work flawlessly across your website.

Forms are submitting data properly.
Form data is being emailed to a recipient and/or stored in a company database.
Internal/External links across web pages are working properly.
Social media share icons are working properly.
Feeds are working properly (RSS, news, social media).
Company logo is linked to the homepage.
Load time for site pages is optimized.
404 Redirect pages are in place (page-not-found.aspx).

4. Compliance

Make sure your website complies with any applicable laws and regulations. Internet law can be overwhelming, and each industry has its own set of rules to follow. Here are a few you might need to know about:

W3C-valid code is the one thing you can do prior to launch to have some confidence around a search engine spider being able to crawl your site.
Web pages offer accessibility for users with disabilities (WAI-ARIA).
Web pages announce if the website uses cookies (required in some countries).
Website is compliant with usage rights for purchased or borrowed code, images, and fonts.
Terms and privacy policies are available to website visitors.
Website is PCI compliant (if you’re storing and processing credit cards).

5. Analytics

Finally, make sure your website is set up to capture web data and analytics. This valuable information will allow you to continually improve your website going forward, so you don’t want to forget this stuff.

Your website analytics codes have been inserted on website.
Funnels and goals have been properly created in your analytics software (if applicable).
Google Webmaster and Google Analytics accounts have been properly synced.
Google AdWords and Google Analytics accounts have been properly synced (if applicable).

After verifying these critical areas, you will be ready to take your website into the wild. Good luck and much success to you and your website.

Mark is a QA Manager with 6+ years of game industry experience and 3+ years of Producer/Project Manager experience in the web and mobile space. As a QA Manager, Mark manages the QA process and teams for multiple apps (Both Live and In Development). At mobile app design agency Appstem, Mark is the on-site paramedic for anything quality-related.