Is It Time to Run The Pre-Launch Test on Your WordPress Website?
Website development on WordPress is much easier than starting the design process from scratch without a stable CMS or a builder platform.
WordPress has made design a lot easier for the developers, but first-timers can find it indeed daunting to create and launch a website all by themselves.
The task becomes next to impossible when the client has little idea of what he desires out of the design process, and you have thousands of templates in hand, just waiting to begin creating.
Steps to perfect your WordPress website
There are millions of active sites on the internet and finding your place among the top players is only possible when you have the right design, SEO, marketing strategies, security, backup, data storage and management strategies and reliable hosting.
Nothing has the potential to mess with website performance as much as missing elements or improperly optimized features.
Designing and launching the site in a hurry can be a complete waste of time if you are not paying attention to the WordPress pre-launch checklist.
A checklist can help you see all the features your site has and all others that your site may need, at a glance. Here is a grand pre-launch list of all WP sites from the Houston search engine optimization team:
Backup solution
No one would even like to think about the possibility of losing his or her work. Since nothing is ever certain in the digital world, the first thing we need you to do is to install a WordPress backup solution.
Backups recover website designs from many disasters, they can help to heal a site, and they provide you with the option of always going back and fixing your mistakes, exactly where you made them.
There are several backup plug-ins WordPress offers that can help you with complete restoration.
Check for cross-browser compatibility
Over 89% of all US mobile users prefer Google over Yahoo and Bing, but there are niche Bing users in the USA who can become your target audience. When designing a website, never discount the possibility of other search engines crawling your site.
You need to ensure cross-browser compatibility for the iOSx users and Linux users who often prefer Safari and Opera for browsing.
Double check the admin area
WordPress is indeed the best CMS platform for multiple reasons. Maybe for the same reasons, hackers are especially partial towards WP.
Some plug-ins add extra layers of security to your user account and your site. Sucuri is one of the most popular security plug-ins for all WordPress users today.
Finish all open tasks
When designing, notifications of open tasks, notes, and change requests keep popping up. It is easy to look past them and forget them, but experts always recommend completing and closing all pending tasks before you can move on.
Banish the 404s
Check your website for all the 404 errors. You can use crawlers from the WP repository, or you can use tools like the ScreamingFrog to see if your site has any broken or missing links. Broken links and missing links are like dead ends for crawling bots.
When Google Bots don’t understand where to go, they take it as a negative signal. 404s affect the rankings adversely.
Go to each page
Human eyes can perform much better than plug-ins and tools when it is time to double check the features on each web page. Here’s a comprehensive list of things you should double check while you are sifting through the pages –
- Logo
- Images
- Design
- Text and typography
- CTAs
- Header/footer
- Widgets
- Social media
- Sidebars, navigation bars, sliders and more
- Links
- Forms and contact details
- Login
Purchase the pictures
You might find cool free images here and there, but you need HD images for your website. Only use images with a proper commercial license. Always validate the usage rights of every image on your site.
Check the forms once again!
While you are setting up email subscriptions and login features, run another check to see if the forms are performing okay.
All the fields, buttons, and options must work before the site goes live. It is especially required if your site has to deal with multiple authors and admins.
Check your SEO
Finally, it is time to check your site’s search engine optimization. You can complete the task by choosing plugins like Yoast SEO.
It is one of the best plug-ins for running all kinds of SEO checks. It will help you understand the use of tags, the requirement of Alt Tags of images and other components.
Preparing for ecommerce
All website performances ultimately depend on user experience. You can use WordPress for e-commerce, provided you have the WooCommerce plug-in that allows seamless integration of e-commerce features to your WordPress site.
WordPress website design is not rocket science. Once you have a simple flowchart or a checklist, it is a lot easier to manage your website development process.
You can include all the latest design trends and use the modern themes after you have the checklist ready for your pre-launch stages.
