So, you are finally done with the design and development process and waiting for the grand launch of your website. Its finally time that cyberspace sees the result of your creative excellence and technical expertise and months (or even days) of hard work. Just everything is ready and raring to go. Or is it? It often happens that you get so excited about completing the project that you tend to forget little things here and there. Here is a 5-point checklist that you need to refer to before launching your website formally in order to make sure it is complete in all respects.

1. Title Tags and Meta Data

Often, designers forget to include the title tags for web pages or end up using a particular title for all the pages of the website. This deprives the website of valuable SEO benefits. Title tags are actually the 'title' of web pages. They inform the search engine crawlers about what the web page is about and also help website visitors about the contents before they even have to read through the page. And same is the case with Meta tags and descriptions. Make sure you specify unique titles and descriptions for every page of your website.

2. Cross Browser Compatibility

Your website may look absolutely perfect on IE but when you open it in Firefox it could be an utter mess. Often, designers forget to check their designs across multiple browsers and thus they don't have a hint if it doesn't work well on some. This leads to loss of precious web traffic. Make sure your perform a cross browser compatibility check and ensure that the website functions well across major browsers like IE 6,7 and 8, Firefox 3, Safari 3, Chrome, Opera and the iPhone.

3. Grammatically Correct and Error Free Content

All it takes is one grammatical/spelling mistake in your website content to make visitors realize how serious and professional you are in your business. It is extremely important that you thoroughly check your website contents and make sure there are no errors or inconsistencies in the text. Read all the pages of your website yourself and also make someone else read it. You would be surprised to note the mistakes that you yourself would have missed.

4. Broken Links

There is nothing that frustrates visitors more than broken links. Scan your website from start to end and click through on all the links to check if they work and point to the right direction. The logo should always link to your homepage. Also, make sure that all the links on the web page stand out very clearly. Change the color and underline the links. Also, the visited links should be presented in a different color.

5. 404 Error Page

404 error page is the oft-forgotten design element in the website design process. This is the page that gets displayed when the user requests for a page that doesn't exist. It is very important to communicate with your users on the 404 error page and guide them back to the website. Explain to them what the problem is and why they have arrived on the 404 error page and provide a link back to the homepage or previous page from where they can start their browsing journey again.

Labels: design, Design Reviews, Website Designing