Webmaster Articles > Things to Check Before Putting Your Website Live
Learn how topics such as usability, conversions, and website load time should be evaluated before launching a website.
If the website is more than a brochure design, can users easily understand what they have to do? For example, a website may be of the e-commerce type which requires users to select what they want and checkout for payment. Are selection and checkout instructions written in such a way that they are not full of technical jargon and relatively easy for the users to understand? And, when there is an error condition, do users fully understand what they need to do in order to recover from it? Likewise, do they know why they error occurred?
Does the content of the website get to the point? People searching for information don't have a lot of time. When content is written that is full of irrelevant information, it is difficult for the site's visitors to find what they are looking for. Therefore, the likelihood of leaving the website is quite high. Some web designers in London will do more than just a website for you, this is when the cost really pay off. They might charge a little more than the others but you will get more attention on the website as well as extra work like checking the content to make sure they are related and good for your target audience.
Are the outbound links on the site of high-quality and not broken? Broken outbound links on a web page are more than just annoying. Picture this: a visitor to your website is thrilled when he or she finds an outbound link that holds promise to what they are looking for. Then, they click on the link and it goes to a "not found" page. The user then goes from excitement to disappointment in just a few seconds. They also remember that it was your website with the broken link which doesn't do well for your site's reputation.
There are many free online tools you can use to check all pages for broken links. Run your website through one of these tools and see if your website has any broken links. This will ensure the search engine bots can reach all pages, therefore index them correctly. Also, you need to make sure the pages have at least one link out to another page, so that the search engine bots won't get stuck on a page.
Does the website perform well? Load time should be tested for not only broadband users but those using devices at dial-up speeds as well. Consider that many handheld mobile devices such as phones download web pages at narrow band speeds. One indicator of a site that will perform well is if it has minimal HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) code and uses CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to handle the layout.
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