Sep 20 2010

The New Website Checklist

There are many things that developers and marketers must keep in mind when they are about to launch a brand new website, but you may not necessarily have an actual checklist of to-do items. For this reason, this new website checklist has been compiled for your convenience. It may not be definitive, but it will help you get the fundamentals of your site right so that your website start’s life with its best foot forward.

1. Meaningful & Logical Structure

It is important to maintain a relevant relationship between the title of your pages and the content thereof. Keep in mind that search engines prefer URLs separated using hyphens instead of underscores. Use a flat architecture with economical use of directories so that content is as few clicks away from the root as possible.

2. Relevant, Unique Page Titles for Every Page

This is one aspect of development that can be easy to overlook, and it won’t make competition any easier for your website. Pages without custom titles look unprofessional and are a huge missed opportunity; Firefox will simply display your page as “Mozilla Firefox” and Internet Explorer will title it as your URL. At the time of writing, there are millions of indexed pages with “Untitled Document” as their title – don’t let your site be one of them!

3. Unique Meta Descriptions for Every Page

Considered useless by many, search engines do show meta descriptions in their search engine results page. If this is missing, then copy from the page will be used instead. If you are interested in having boosting your CTR from SERPs, it would be wise to create a unique meta description for each and every page. Think of the meta description like an advertisement to be read by users scanning the list of results, so make it stand out from the crowd!

4. Valid XHTML and CSS

It is always important to ensure your CSS and XHTML are valid without any issues, lest your website break in a browser. Always check that your website will work with a wide range of browsers to avoid usability problems for users and robots.

5. Externalize Javascript

Using inline Javascript is lazy because it is impossible for the browser to cache inline Javascript, effectively adding weight into the page. Always keep Javascript in a separate, external file. Additionally, externalise your CSS so that it isn’t included at the top of each page.

6. Use Includes for Footers, Headers and Navigation

It’s a hundred times easier to tweak your copyright date or your logo if you separate these commonly accessed files and turn them into includes. Anything that’s a common element on every page should be an include – it’s such a massive time saver!

7. Changeable Text Sizes for Better Usability

For the purposes of accessibility, this is definitely a must. Browsers will allow resizing of text if you specify their default size via ems or percentages. Constraints will be made when you use fixed pixel sizes, so avoid this unless absolutely necessary. It is much better not to force your readers to view content at one fixed size when you do not have to.

8. Sitemaps

Sitemaps help a search engine to crawl your website and are a really useful tool in your SEO belt. Ideally you will have a sitemap (typically linked to from the footer) that users can consult if they get lost and another version optimised for crawlers.

9. Reserve User Names on Social Networks

The importance of social media both for branding, community building and driving traffic to your website cannot be emphasised enough. As people spend increasingly more time on websites like Facebook and Twitter, it becomes even more essential that you go to where the users are. When you’re reserving your domain name, check that it is possible to set up a profile using the same name on the most important social networks so that your branding is consistent.

10. Write a Privacy Policy

If you are collecting data from a user in any way, there is a data protection act that requires you employ a privacy policy into your website. Not only should you have this available on your website, but it would be wise to include your company’s contact details and make them publicly available on your website.

This post was contributed by James Adams, a full time in-house analyst and product reviewer who currently works at a leading print cartridge supplier offering franking machine ink to businesses across the United Kingdom.

7 Responses to “The New Website Checklist”

  1. crusher says:
    September 21, 2010 at 2:26 am

    thanks,very good

  2. Alex Dumitru says:
    September 21, 2010 at 10:14 am

    I agree with them all except the XHTML and CSS validation. I don’t really think that’s necessary.

    Billy Hahn Reply:
    October 3rd, 2010 at 3:34 pm

    XHTML and CSS validation are also important

  3. Adrien says:
    September 27, 2010 at 6:14 am

    Hi there, thanks for these tips, I would add, be sure you integrate your most important keyword into your url (added to the name of your brand or company name) !

  4. Keith Davis says:
    September 27, 2010 at 7:10 am

    All good points for the design of any website.
    Obvious but overlooked by so many people.

    You will still find sites with the CSS on the page?

    Thanks for the list.

  5. 3D Chat says:
    July 12, 2011 at 9:19 am

    I think I ´ve covered all of those issues, but what if the server is kind of lame, it´s not a all time problem but sometimes it ´s really slow and breaking down, so what to do?!

  6. MacDonald Highlands Real Estate says:
    December 1, 2011 at 1:17 pm

    These issues are very useful for checking the new websites around. Having a list is very necessary because you can forget some very important things. This here is a very nice list.