A 10-Step Checklist to Create a Successful Website

Sometimes it creates stress and frightening situation to anticipate perfect moments for the introduction of a fresh website when it goes live. It often conceives as a waste of time and precipitates lots of frustration.

Rather than feeling swamped consider your website a business, which requires constant alteration and growth in direct response to your customer’s needs.

It is not necessary to have a perfect website the moment you publish it. However, you may follow some instructions to make sure that your launched website is user-friendly, protected, and contains rich contents.

You are on the important step of creating an incredible website if you have an attractive logo designed well for your business. Prior to the publication of your site, you can have a quality review of your website by applying this modest checklist created for professionals and an embellished website having the potential to emerge and grow over time.

Decide the date of launch

The first and foremost step is to select your date of launch. After that, you can keep updating people about the details of your fresh website. Use the list of contact on your email and social media to keep them informed.

After you have booked your domain it is wise to use a simple message like “coming soon” on your website to signal a meaningful impact prior to the lunch.

The time period required to publish your website varies from a week to months subject to your selection of platform. You should draft a tight timeline to get your site launched and fully operative.

Pick a website-building platform

There are various platforms for selection of website which can be accessible with a simple search on Google. You have to do homework to seek for the one that best matches the nature of your business, financial budget, skills and expertise, and your own choices for the website.

There are two essentials methods to build your website.

Do-it-Yourself (DIY)

This method allows you to choose the website trimmed for your specific needs, time and resources. It has tools necessary to permit you to build it by yourself and thus known as Do-it-Yourself (DIY).

Do-it-for-Me (DIFM)

A platform not only enables its user to select tools tailored to its specific needs but also lets its user hire an expert to work for him/herself.  Thus, this is the best option if you are seeking an expert’s advice and using its ability to develop your website more professionally.

Whatever the website platform you are using, you always have to take care of its cost involved. On one hand, some platforms are free but they offer limited functions or tasks. On the other hand, there are some platforms demanding initial cost and convey results early. But these costly platforms may not have an option to install updates regularly in compliance with the needs of your developing business.

Decide the platform you actually required by comparing the different capacities of prevalent platforms. These capacities include accessibility to integrate with the third party, after-sales services, and search engine optimization (SEO) best fit to your business.

Selecting the domain name

The name of the domain is the address of your website when someone searches it on the address bar of a web browser. A unique domain name (e.g. businessname.com) advantages businesses to stand out prominently on the internet.

While selecting its name, beware to choose convenient and short words. These words shouldn’t violate copyright and trademark rules. Mostly, the domain is named after the name of your business or brand.

Tip: Avoid including any numbers, hyphens, or artistic writings.

Choosing a host

Sometimes, the host you need for your website is different from the platform that builds your website.

This step is vital to retain your website which is usually skipped. A reliable host will prevent it to expose to the risk of non-availability during a certain period.

A selection of right host is so important that it affects things such as running time (time period during which your website is open to visitors), speed of the website, extension, and elasticity.

The selected host should always be able to manage to traffic to your website. That is why your platform plan of the one should include hosting of your domain (Check to see!)

Emphasis on user experience

The most crucial portion of your website is the user experience (abbreviated as UX). It has two components: design and navigation.

Having a knowledge of your website design is vital not just to support your brand but also to take care of the requirements of your audience. Requirements such as their needs and area of interest should consider.

Every page should lay emphasis on solutions to the problems your customer may encounter. This has a direct connection with your website design that involves its contents, pictures, videos, and overall construction of the page.

The more you take care of the needs of customers, the more is the probability that you create a UX best suited to them.

Aim for a consistent look and feel

The logo of your brand represents your business visually. Make sure you have it already, it will assist you to select the color scheme, style of the font, and other details of your website. If you still don’t have one, it’s not a problem. Online logo makers will help you to create the brand identity in a matter of minutes.

The visual design of your website should be such that it adds value to your brand and attracts more visitors. In order to convey important messages and improve the appearances of the text contained in the website use graphics, images, and attractive videos.

Your initial website should contain plain sailing and smooth design. At the start, keep few fonts with selective colors comprises of ample white spaces. You can search for some of the websites of famous companies in your industry to get inspiration about design and effective graphical elements. If you have troubles finding good designs, we have a collection of WordPress themes that you can use for your website.

Don’t forget that trends of design are temporary. This means that there is a need to apply alteration in your website regularly in order to keep pace with the norms of the industry and fulfill the expectation of your prospective customers.

Create compelling content

Constructing a prominent content is as important as website design for greater user experience.

Your content should keep into consideration the expectations and needs of your audience. It should also address the issues they are encountering along with the proposed solutions. This will focus on the advantages of your products and services instead of the characteristics of products alone.

To reach out to your audience, you have to make your content incompatible with search engine optimization (SEO). This is really something significant. Content optimization will help your audience to find you conveniently.

Define keywords for searching your brand online. These keywords are upon a number of factors including your brand name, problems encountered, solutions demanded by audience, etc. You have to set a keyword targeted for every page.

Never rush your content with a number of keywords as this will cause it to deteriorate and may allow Google to disturb your rankings. This should be limited to one per 150 words.

You can opt the opportunity of automatic optimization of your site on SEO by simple plugin or subscribing on a monthly basis. But it all depends upon the platform you are using for your website. Plugins are used to organize meta and permits you to place the right keywords.

Apply test for its usability

After you have finished with website design, its navigation, and contents, it time to apply a test for its user-friendliness. This test for its usability is to make sure that you have done an appropriate work. This test includes the following features:

• Check the readability of the content. Also, check whether or not it can be scanned and have a structure aligned with headers and sub-headers.
• Use a various web browser to see whether it is operative or not?
• Does the mobile support your website? If it does not support it then SEO efforts are not reliable.
• Is it comprehensive enough to guide its user about their learning needs?

If the answer is “No” to all or any of the above questions then you need to update its features. You can regularly use the tools like Crazy Egg, Hotjar, or UserTesting to perform the test for its usability.

Keep your site secure

In order to maintain the security of your website, it needs HTTPS and an SSL certificate. It is needed irrespective of payment requirements and other delicate information.

HTTPS, Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, is added before a website and scrambles the linkage between a website and its visitor. As you noticed, HTTPS is the protected version of HTTP.

HTTPS site only permits visitor and webserver to access the data. This is done through SSL certificate. It is SSL certificate displays the lock sign at the address bar, you must have noticed. It is a signal that a secure connection has been established between the browser and the server.

SSL certificate can be purchased from the builder of your website, or if you have several websites, you can use a multi-domain SSL certificate. Sometimes, the website is flocked with spam comments or other details. To secure this problem, use WordPress security plugins for your website (most of them are free!)

Sign up for Google Analytics for your website

If you want to keep the track of your visitors, you are required to set up a free Google Analytical code with your website. They will generate a tracking code that maintains the record of visitors when attached to the site. It will be in HTML of each page.

Tracking includes website referrals, views on the page, average time spent and much more. Analytics attached to your website is vital to its success and will strengthen its presence online.

While Google Analytics is a great software, you can use other free alternatives that is simpler and easier to use.

Publish the website!

Finally, it’s time to put the website checklist aside and publish your website online. Before you launch it, spare some time to re-read its text, ensure the reliability of layout, check the links, and after that launch it.

The real effectiveness of a website is measured after it goes live. With data on your screen, you can monitor the success/failure of each page in terms of the engagement of visitors. This will help you to apply modifications to your work.

It takes time to launch a fresh website and obviously it compels you to take many assessments about your business. But it is the best opportunity to look into what you are doing more vividly and more excitedly. Therefore, don’t take more time to launch it.