Are you getting ready to introduce a brand-new WordPress site? Congratulations, that’s a major milestone for sure!
However, it can also be a very stressful time. How can you be sure that you haven’t overlooked an essential WordPress element or configuration that could lead to roadblocks in the future?
Developing a Website with WordPress can be considered as a fascinating constructing journey. After putting in all that hard work, you finally get the chance to show it to the rest of the world and start getting visitors.
With the WordPress development company’s assistance and tailored website launch checklist, you are assured that you have completed all the necessary steps and that your site is ready for public consumption.
Here’s what you should include in your WordPress checklist:
- Website Development
- Website Design
Website Development
Your WordPress development company and you will invest several efforts and resources for a successful website launch.
Predominantly, they will consider the following aspects:
Website Backup
Software development plays an important role in ensuring a fresh website backup right before your grand launch. It serves as a crucial initiative to prevent unintentional and unknowing data loss that holds significant importance for your brand.
Backup ensures that you have this data with you a couple of months or years later. Your developer provider will avoid the following to enable a smooth backup:
- Malware attack
- Error in update
- Somebody hacked your website
- Computer crash
- Human error
Your WordPress website won’t rely on one backup option to secure your website and brand data.
Plugin Configurations
Confirming that all plugins integrated into your WordPress website are installed appropriately and active is essential. Experts recommend the following plugins for websites:
- Security plugin
- Yoast SEO plugin
- Google Analytics for WordPress
- Simple 301 redirects
Eliminate Unwanted Information
While developing your website, it is challenging to maintain everything in a synchronized manner. That being said, you should take some time to bifurcate the elements required for your website and eliminate the unwanted aspects.
For instance, this is the ideal time to delete:
- Old blurred images
- Unused plugins
- Discard duplicate posts and content
Check Legal Pages
Before the grand launch, review all your legal pages to analyze:
- Terms and conditions
- Privacy policy page
- Refund policy
- Disclaimer page
- Cookie Policy
- Copyright notice
All these checks assure your potential audience that your website is safe to use and they won’t be led to unwanted legal issues.
Specific Time Zone
The right time zone on your WordPress website allows your audience to learn about your availability. Besides, it will enable you to:
- Publish the post at the right time
- Schedule social messages
Error-Free Content
Before you upload content on your website, make sure it has no grammatical errors and is not plagiarized.
Alongside, run the following checks:
- Incorrect spellings
- Correct typographical and formatting errors
- Font consistency
- Structured and easy-to-understand content
Website Forms
Imagine your potential audience wants to reach out to you through a form on your website, but your website needs to accept the information. In this case, all your audiences will need help submitting forms and give up even before submitting them.
Avoid this loss of customers with the following checks:
- Test forms
- Notify errors on the screen
- Confirm forms don’t end in spam
- Use the right email address for effective lead notifications
- Link correct pages
Website Design
Page Design
You can get a head start on your website design evaluation by contrasting the final version of your website design with your freshly launched live website.
It depends on the size of the individual website, but most websites have the following pages as a basic minimum. Before launching your website, these pages should be examined to ensure that the design is accurate.
About
Home
Product/Service
Blog
Team
Contact page
404 page
Website Structure
Take some time to think about the overall layout of your website before you go live with it (hierarchy). Your chances of achieving a higher ranking in search engines will improve in proportion to the quality of the structure of your website.
It would be best if you verified that your website design is compatible with the architecture of the initial site. This will help to increase the online visibility and improve the website ranking.
Tagline. Logo. Images
When people visit your website for the first time, the first thing they notice is the logo, images, and tagline. Therefore, you should carefully examine these components when launching your website.
In most cases, images are an essential component of the design of a website. Therefore, a comprehensive audit of all the photos hosted on your website must be an integral component of the launch checklist for any WordPress website.
We all strive to have the most incredible photographs on our websites. But on the other hand, images that are too huge might significantly slow down a website. Therefore, before uploading images to a website, it is essential to ensure they have been properly optimized for online use.
Most image optimization programs suggest that the file size of an image should be between 30 and 150 KB.
Website Navigation
The navigation bar is the roadmap to reach all the web pages that are significant to you.
You should check it by clicking on each tab and examining it separately. But first, you have to make sure that:
- There are no issues with the presentation in the drop-down menu.
- All of the sub-tabs are functioning as expected.
- Every one of them is connected to the appropriate page.
Links And CTA
Links allow users to move around on your website, and if one of those links breaks, it may be detrimental to both the user experience and your search engine optimization.
You need to check all of the internal and external links to ensure that they are functioning correctly and as expected.
You must locate these broken links and make the necessary corrections before a crawler does.
You may scan your website for broken links and fix them with the help of a smart solution or an excellent tool. In addition to this, it is recommended that you check the links in the navigation, sidebar, and footer.
Before the website launch, you should review every social media profile link to check that it leads to the correct social media profile and opens in a new tab. It would help if you also made sure that the links open in a new tab.
The call to action on your website plays a significant role in the branding of your website as well as the conversion of visits into leads and customers.
You must not forget to review your entire website and check to see that all of the “calls to action” are consistent and operating correctly.
Mobile Responsive
A user-friendly website on mobile devices is no more a desirable extra feature; it is an imperative need in the modern era. Examine each component on various mobile devices, and check to see that your website has been optimized.
Last Thoughts
Apart from the design and development, you should consider technical SEO issues, website performance, and security for consistent efficacy. These parameters ensure that your website is easy to reach and can convert potential customers into actual purchases.
A good WordPress development company can make this journey convenient for you and maintain your website for a better outcome.
