Website Post-Launch Checklist

So you just finished your pre-launch checklist and your brand new site is now live on the web.

Now what?

Once your site is live, there are still plenty of things you can do to make sure the customer experience is smooth and free of obstacles. Analytics, privacy, and an overall check is always helpful to run through some basic points to make sure the site is running at its highest potential.

Here are our tips for making sure your website has checked off all of the most important factors for a professional, SEO-optimized, and seamless customer experience.

Perform a Security Plugin Check

It is important to check that you have all of your security plugins installed and activated in order to protect your users from malicious activity and ensure a safe user experience. These include plugins that provide login security, secure information protection, and even things such as two-factor authentication. Once your site is live, make sure that these plugins are all on and updated to the latest versions.

Check Your Site Headline

To check your site title and headline in WordPress, go to Settings > General and check that the following fields are filled in with the following information:

Site Title: [Name of Company]
Tagline: [Client Tagline]
Email Address: [Client Email Address] (Note: this is the email address that will receive wordpress notifications of new comments, orders, etc)
Timezone: [Client timezone] (Note: do not use UTC +/- zones because the time will not automatically update based on daylight savings time, etc)
Date Format: [Local Standard] If the client is in the United States the default time format is fine, if the client is overseas and their date format is DD-MM-YY you may use that format.
Time Format: [Local Standard] Typically HH:MM am/pm will be fine unless client requests otherwise.
Week Starts On: [Local Standard] In the United States the week starts on Sunday, in other parts of the country the week starts on Monday.

Once you have verified these are all filled in accurately, click Save Changes.

Next, check on the homepage display. Go to Settings > Reading and go over the following fields:

Homepage: Typically a static page is used as the homepage and posts page default. You may need to come back to this particular setting once the correct pages have been created. In the meantime you can select “Sample Page” as the default Homepage. If you’re working in a currently created website, just select “HOMEPAGE”.

Now to work on your search engine visibility: Check off “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”. This will prevent Google and other search engines from indexing the website while under development. Just prior to launch this will be deselected.

NOTE: If you are working in a currently created website, DO NOT CHECK THIS BOX! Leave it indexed.

Now click Save Changes and let’s move on.

Next, go to Settings > Permalinks and make sure the following fields are updated:

Select “Custom Structure” and use the available tags /%category%/%postname%/

Click Save Changes.

Double Check Privacy Settings

To check on the privacy settings of your site, Go to Settings > Privacy and update the following fields:

Click “Use This Page”:

If everything is setup properly, you should now see the following at the top of your screen indicating that all the settings are properly setup!

Test Your Email Notifications

Check your SendGrid app and ensure everything is setup as you planned. Also go through the site and make sure that all of the email triggers are working properly. You can check on this process by going on the SendGrid Website and sending an email from your application. If that runs without error, click “Verify Integration”. Be sure to close the SendGrid Website Connection, and you’re all set!

Test Your Product Pages, Checkout, Forms, and Links

Before any customers reach your site, you should test the product pages, shopping cart, opt-in forms, and links that you have placed throughout your site. You should verify that all of the links work and and direct users to the correct address. Your product page should be clearly organized and have buttons that all work as intended. Finally, make sure your checkout page is working properly and has all of the payment options ready to go and executes payments properly.

Double Check Facebook Pixel

The Facebook Pixel tool helps you track conversions from ads from social media and better understand the actions users are taking on your site. It is very easy to setup and just requires a few simple steps that can be found here.

Double Check Bing and Google Tools

Getting data and information from search engines will help you tailor your website’s experience based on what your customers actions are telling you. Bing webmaster and the Google Analytics toolsuite help you get in-depth insights into multiple data points including:

• Overall visits
• New visits
• Traffic sources – where are your clicks coming from?
• Most successful traffic sources
• Your most popular content

WordPress allows for easy integration of a variety of different analytics tools into your website. Simply sign up for the services, download the plugins, and connect your website to start getting smarter with your website decisions. Some of these plugins include the Bing Webmaster tool and the Google Search console.

Update Smartcrawl SEO

If you want to get the best SEO results and want your relevant customers find you more easily, Smartcrawl’s SEO tool will help you get there. The tool helps to optimize, analyze, and even gives suggestions on how to improve the readability and keyword density of your copy. To do this, install the plugin and follow these steps:

1. Open page to optimize
2. Scroll to smartcrawl section
3. Under google preview, review all of the info to check if it is relevant to the page content.

The ultimate goal here is to get a green check next to all of the factors they give you. Edit the meta description, SEO title, description, and keywords until they are all approved.

Next up are the keywords.

Enter the Keyword that you want this page to RANK for. Be sure to not include stop words. For more information on how to do this, see https://premium.wpmudev.org/docs/wpmu-dev-plugins/smartcrawl/#chapter-6

Once you have entered the focus keywords, hit “REFRESH”. You should now see “SEO RECOMMENDATIONS.” Go through each of these and address the problems where it is appropriate. You should aim for a Flysh Kincaid readability score of 60-70% for the best results. Next up, customize the description and featured image for your social media pages and add your logo and alt text to the image. Finally, as you can see on the following page, set the indexing, canonical, 301 redirect, and automatic linking to the settings you choose. Be sure to set the “sitemap priority” to automatic prioritization.

SSL Certificate

If you are not familiar with an SSL certificate, it is basically a protective layer that protects and encrypts the browser link between you and your website visitors. This protects both parties from becoming vulnerable to hackers and data breaches. This helps ensure that all of the data exchanged between the two remains private and secure. SSL encryptions prevent hackers from stealing private information such as credit card numbers, names, and addresses.

Check for Images Alt Text

We try to add alt text to images as we upload the new media, but this is something you can easily double check after the launch of your website. Simply open up the Media Library in WordPress and enter descriptions of each image for it’s alt text. This is an SEO ranking factor that will be worth the time spent.

Update Final URL’s

Sometimes when you’re in site development, you may use a different URL structure to stay organized while you build. We try to use the same URL menu and structure that we know we are going to end up with as we build, but sometimes pages get added or removed during the build so change cannot be avoided. So after the site is launched, this is when you double check Redirection on a daily basis to ensure all pages are redirecting and going to the right place.