Nigel Wilkinson
Managing Director of Daneswood. Nigel has been in sales and marketing since the 1980's and run digital marketing agencies since 2000.
Completing your new website is an exciting time, and you probably can’t wait to see it go live and start telling the world. First, here are a few points to consider.
Both you and your developers should be doing Quality Control; it’s hard to check your own work, so ensure fresh eyes are on the project, especially on any text. Check the display and navigation on desktop, tablet, laptop and ideally Android and iPhone smartphones.
Do images load, videos play, and dropdowns function? We have an extensive checklist of things to cover, but it’s always worth getting extra eyes on it.
If you are putting a website live for the first time, there is less to go wrong. Google won’t pay much attention for the first six months, so you can correct any uncovered issues.
When you are replacing a website, there is lots you need to do; indeed, if you have left it to pre-launch, you are already facing an uphill battle! Things you need to cover include:
- Full software crawl of the existing website pages and compare to new website URL structure.
- Optimising meta titles, meta descriptions and any new/adjusted content on the new website.
- Writing redirects for all pages on the existing website so that on launch, all changed page names are redirected through to their new locations.
- Moving over Google Analytics code, plus any eCommmerce, PPC, Goals and Events tracking.
- Code optimisation on new website to ensure Google site speed is fast and elements such as h1 tags are one per page and well placed.
- Setting up Sitemap page and XML Sitemaps on new website.
- After launch, submit an XML Sitemap to Google Search Console, and monitor Search Console and Google Analytics to ensure rankings are maintained.
Putting the new website live only to find you have effectively wiped all your previous Google rankings is an expensive error.
Once the website goes live, you want to be checking everything over again, this time including all the contact forms, Calls to Action and any links. Put through test orders if you are an eCommerce website.
This is our Christmas week blog, so “Making a List & Checking it twice” seems timely advice!
We recommend going live on Monday-Thursday and never in the week before major holidays; you want to ensure people are on hand, just in case anything goes wrong.
For more detail on planning your Website Launch and creating a website that elevates your business, download our free guide – we don’t ask for your contact details – you can find it here.