After a painstaking process – you’ve finally finished designing your new WordPress website! But before you break out the bubbly, ask yourself – is it ready to go live?
You’ve certainly done the hard work, but to make sure your website launch puts you in the best position to make an impact, check out our WordPress site pre-launch list of things you need to pay attention to before going live.
1. Check images/videos/sliders
Make sure all images on your website are loading properly with a quick guide. Take the time to play all the videos on your website and ensure they work as intended. If you have a WordPress slider plugin then also check this is working correctly.
2. Cross-browser compatibility
It’s highly advised that you still test how your site will look and perform on all major browsers. You can run your site across all browsers yourself, or use online tools to help you do this and ensure your site looks great no matter which browser it’s being viewed on.
3. Set up your privacy policy
You’ll need to inform visitors of your business name, location, and your contact information. Also, it’s obligatory to inform them of how you’ll collect, store, protect, and use their data. User’s personal data includes their name, address (both postal and email), IP address, date of birth, telephone number, and debit or credit card details. This is a legal requirement in some countries. Having your privacy policy in place also establishes trust between yourself and potential customers and gives your website further legitimacy.
4. SEO optimisation
Ensure your content is SEO optimised before going live to give your website the best Google search engine ranking possible. Also remember SEO optimisation is for life, not just for Christmas.
5. Test social integrations
A social media presence is playing an increasingly important role in winning business so make sure users can find ways to connect with your website on social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc. Confirm your social sharing plugins are working properly and also consider using some social monitoring tools to see how you’re performing on social media.
Whilst making sure your social integrations run smoothly, consider using social media as a tool in your website launch. Social media provides even more channels to find and interact with your target audience, and by harnessing it correctly your website launch can see even more traffic.
Make sure your content is easily sharable and select a few pieces that are engaging and communicate your USP or mission to post across your launch week. There is a range of tools to automate your social media share and make sure covering this platform isn’t time-consuming.
6. Check all website forms
Test your contact forms, free trial forms, email subscription forms and anything else that will require the visitor to give their details. You want to be sure you receive this information smoothly and that visitors can be confident in the security of your website.
7. Install Google analytics
The final element of getting your WordPress site ready to launch is having tools in place to track visitor interactions with your website. Google Analytics is the simplest way to track your performance, from click-through rate, bounce rate and session length. There are plenty of guides to installing Google Analytics in WordPress so make sure you know what you want to track and assess your performance metrics at regular intervals.
For more tips on improvements, you can make to your website take a look at our blog or get in touch with us at info@helloslate.co.uk
Posted: August 2019
Author: Slate
