Successful websites require a series of important pre-launch stages to ensure they have the best chance of succeeding. Client liason, technical specs, design briefs, accessibility, standards compliance and SEO are all important factors in the DNA of the top performing sites. Through years of commercial experience we have found the final quality assurance stage to be one of the most important. This vital stage ensures both platform stability and quality is at it’s optimum pre-launch.
A pre-launch website checklist is a key tool and should be used religiously on every new website build. A useful online tool that seems to successfully identify all the key pre-launch points is Launchlist. Winner of ‘CSS Awards Site of the Day’, Launchlist offers a simple, user friendly online checklist for websites. You simply answer Yes or No to their questions and they say whether your site is ready to launch. You can even add your own points, useful if you have a additional QA’s. The service is currently FREE with a Pro service on the horizon.
A few sample check points
All text free from spelling errors?
Content has been placed consistently?
Page & Content formatting has been tested?
Print stylesheet exists and tested?
Meta data has been included and is appropriate?
Page titles are descriptive and SEO friendly?
Images have appropriate alt text?
Title attributes are appropriate and SEO friendly?
Favicon has been created and displays correctly?
Footer includes copyright and link to site creator?
HTML has passed validation? Check using the W3C HTML validation service
CSS has passed validation? Check using the W3C CSS validation service
There are no broken links?
And so on and so forth.
April 24th, 2011 at 9:30 pm
Launchlist looks really cool, thanks Gary!
I’ve found that WordPress has unique requirements when it comes to launching a re-designed website. I’ve created a similar web design launch checklist specifically for WordPress outlining the design, development, SEO, tracking, backup, security & performance qualities needed to make sure that a site is rockstar quality! Hopefully it helps some of the readers, thanks for the great article!