What can your website do for you?

Is literally the most important question for you (and us). If you know the answer to that question, and you want to make your website work FOR your business, you’ll want to ensure some key checks have been carried out before launching your baby into the world wide web.  

We’ve put together a handy list of 7 + plus 2 bonus tips to perform just prior to launching your site.

You’ll find more details on each one of these checks below.

1. Ensure that images are optimized for speed

2. Test all forms work and CAPTCHA is enabled

3. Your SSL license is active and working

4. Your GDPR regs are in place alongside Privacy Policy and Terms of Use

5. Ensure the website pages load correctly on mobile devices and tablets  

6. Check for spelling and continuity errors – button links and CTA’s

7. You have a marketing strategy for attracting traffic and getting reviews/testimonials  

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1) Ensure that images are optimised for speed

A slow website degrades the experience of your visitors, meaning they are less likely to get in touch or buy from you.  

Often the main culprit is images – we often grab images we like straight from the internet...but because they haven’t been optimised, they can slow our websites down significantly.  

Perform these checks on your images:

• How big are they in mb (megabytes)? Ideally they should not be in megabytes at all – they should be at maximum 250kb but ideally 100kb or less
• How big in dimensions? If your image is only displayed in a small section, but its 3000 x 2000px in size – stop now and resize it appropriately.

A fast way to get this done is to use a service like www.tinyjpg.com or download Caesium, an image optimising program for PC.  

Optimise and replace your images accordingly.  

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2) Test all forms work and CAPTCHA is enabled

It would not be good if a visitor lodged a contact request with you, and it never made it to you would it! So, testing is important. Submit a test entry in all your website forms, and see if they arrive in the form of an email notification. If so, great!  

You will also want to ensure you have obtained CAPTCHA information from Google, so that you can reduce the amount of spam entries in your forms.  

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3) Your SSL license is working and active

Websites with SSL now rank more favourably on Google than those without. Ensure your host has provided you with an SSL ‘lock’ (shown just before the www. In a browser) and it has been activated on your domain. Important for security and customer confidence.

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4) Your GDPR policies are in place

This is law. Ensure your visitors receive the standard popup at the bottom when they arrive on your site, asking them whether they accept cookies. They will also need to access a dynamic area of your site, usually in the form of a popup, where they can actively select what they agree to.

This also depends on the fact you have working pages for Privacy Policy, Cookies and Terms of Use setup.  

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5) Ensure the website load correctly on mobile devices and tablets

Cross-examine all your pages on different devices. Ensure that no text is running off the screen, or that certain text is not too small to read.

Importantly, do not neglect landscape mode on various devices as this can often be overlooked.  

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6) Check for spelling and continuity errors

This an obvious one?! Again, this is often overlooked. Take an hour out of your day to read through all your content on your website. Spelling and grammar is important – but more important is your button links and CTA’s.  

Your Call To Actions are important for diverting traffic to get in touch with you, so if these links don’t work – customers will be put off. Cross check all buttons and links to ensure that they also go to the RIGHT pages.

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7) You have a marketing strategy for attracting traffic and getting reviews/testimonials

Could this be the most important check of all? Most certainly.  

Some businesses get disheartened when they launch a lovely website, but nothing happens. No. New. Customers. Without a marketing strategy of who your customer is, where they are coming from, what they are searching to find you, and where they are located, your website cannot pick up the slack.  

You must know the details of all your customers who you want to take the next step with you through your website.  Also, do not neglect at this stage to begin pulling in testimonials for your website and Google My Business page.  

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And that’s a wrap! Taking this extra time to fully evaluate your website before launch is really important to ensure you give your customers the best experience, and therefore increase your chances of them doing business with you.

We’re not done yet though....

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Bonus Tip: 

‍You can have an SEO plugin installed alongside Google Search Console, Analytics and Google My Business

SEO is really important. Now simply adding an SEO plugin like RankMath or Yoast won’t do much for you unless you know your chosen keywords – but it will assist you in indexing your site and ensuring you have a few things setup, like your sitemap.  

When you are ready to onboard an SEO specialist who can get you ranking in front of the right audience on Google, your foundations will be set.  

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Ensure you’ve got support

There’s nothing worse than that sinking feeling when your website stops working.  

But when there’s good support in place for a reputable, reachable hosting provider, you should be able to get it back up and running quickly.  

If you’re unsure about your host, and whether they provide regular backups – pick up the phone and ask...it can’t hurt!  

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‍If you’ve got value from our article, and still have questions or problems you need to resolve to take your business to the next level – speak to us.