Post-Launch Website Checklist – North Texas Web Design
While we take great care to make sure everything about every new website we build for clients of North Texas Web Design, going “live” on a new website is not the final thing we hold ourselves responsible for. In fact, once we launch a new website, we have several more hours of work that we undertake – all in an effort to ensure each client’s new website is a good as we can make it.
Client Communication – we will keep you informed during the launch with expected timeframes, any important happenings and we’ll confirm once the launch is totally complete.
Verify Secure Areas – if any pages or areas of the website are password-protected, we check to ensure these pages are indeed password-protected areas are actually requiring passwords.
Submit to Google, Yahoo and Bing – we generally wait 24-72 hours after a website has been launched, then we register every site we build with Google, Yahoo and Bing via our Webmaster accounts with these major search engines. This includes submitting appropriate sitemaps to these search engines.
Check for Broken Links – when a site is made live, its URL changes. We check for broken links and correct any we find. If the site is a WordPress site, we use the Velvet Blue plugin for this task – but even Velvet Blue may miss hard coded URL’s – so we double check to ensure all URL’s are functional.
Test Auto-Publishing to Social Media – if your website should auto-post updates to Facebook and Twitter, we verify it’s working by making your first new post after launch.
Check Google Webmaster – we check for 404 errors in Google Webmaster tools. If we find some, we’ll put redirects in place for any important pages that are not redirecting properly. We’ll also verify that Google Analytics is tracking visitors properly.
Post-Launch Follow-up – we have follow-up conversations with all clients to confirm they are nothing but pleased with their new website and to ensure all tasks have been completed.