Launching a website – ultimate checklist for beginners 2023

Considering a new website for your business? Well you're in the right place - we’ve made a concise guide covering key steps to successfully launch a website.

1. Decide How You’re Going To Build Your Website. It is important to decide whether you wish to use a website building software such as Wix or WordPress which allows you to build a website with very little (if any) work with html. Alternatively, if you are a seasoned web developer, you may decide to create your website from scratch, building from manual html and CSS. Whilst this is generally a very laboursome and time consuming process, it can allow you to have greater flexibility over the website design, rendering and functionality. However, the room for error is high, and given the manual nature it is rarely the preferred choice for beginners.

2. Ensure You Have a Valid SSL Certificate. Secure sockets layer certificates display your website’s validity to allow you to safely transfer data using HTTPS (you’ve probably seen this in most website URLs). This is particularly important for any website which features online payments, or submission of personal customer data. If this is not setup, website visitors will get a warning message, which looks terrible for website visitors (see below). Thankfully, most website builders, such as the two examples above, will by default ensure you have HTTPS.

3. Consider Using a Content Management System (CMS). Using as CMS can make your life a LOT easier – this system allows users to make a diverse range of updates and changes to the website, such as product pages and blogs, without having to have direct access to html. A CMS is usually more efficient, and allows for easy addition of plug-ins and snippets for third party website tools.

4. Have a Backup Website in Place. There is nothing worse than making a ‘quick’ update to your website and finding out that you have broken code and parts of your site are now down or showing errors. For this reason it is a lifesaver to have a draft version of your website to test prior to setting live on your 'main' website. This, for example, could be www.valorous.dev.digital – a small change in your normal website’s URL.

5. Set up Appropriate Analytics. Free analytics software such as Google Analytics can be excellent in providing detailed insight in to how your website is performing, such as number of visitors, bounce rate, enquiries, purchases, demographics, geography, to name a few. Such analytical tools can be easily integrated in to your website - simply add a snippet of code which monitors your whole site. This software is particularly crucial for those who have products for sale on their website, but generally is a no-brainer for all website owners.

6. Decide Upon Your Website Structure. It is crucial that you decide how you wish your Home Page to connect to all of your Sub Pages, and this will vary depending on the nature of what you want your website to offer. For instance, a barbershop may wish to have a concise site which covers key details and photos, without a large network of sub pages, such as one of our clients Rebel Road Barbershop. Alternatively, you may have a wide range of products or services which need their own subpages, such as this renewable energy consultancy business, also one of our clients; Brooks Projects. Ultimately, you’ll want to cover the basics on your website structure which generally includes HOME, CONTACT US, ABOUT, PRODUCTS/SERVICES, BLOG. These should also be linked in your header navigation bar for a clear user journey.

7. Check all of Your On-Site Links Work. Cross-linking between pages, call-to-actions and links to external media are all key features of a well optimised website. However, there is the potential room for error when links are broken, leaving a poor user experience for your potential customers and indirectly your SEO quality score due to higher page bounce rates. Click all of your links before you set your website live.

8. Ensure Your Site is Mobile & Tablet Friendly. In an age of smartphones it is crucial to have a website design which is optimised for all devices. Users expect to have a pleasant user experience when browsing your website on any device – looking at Google Analytics device breakdown for our website (below), you can see that over 30% of our web traffic is mobile. Companies which have a retail presence e.g Asos would likely see over 50% of their website traffic from non-desktop devices. Thankfully, if you opted to use a website builder software then you’ll likely have pre-set options to optimise your website with ease.

9. Ensure Your Website is SEO Friendly. One word; Metadata. All websites need to ensure that they have appropriate title tags. This ensures that search engines such as Google can 'crawl' your website successfully and ultimately place your site in higher search engine rankings (that's good!). Better use of metadata, the more likely your target audience will find you. Most website builders will easily allow you to add your metadata and give advice on format.

And you're good to go! We wish you the best of luck with your website building. And of course, if you need a hand, hit the button below to see how we can help you.

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