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At our digital marketing agency, we’re currently in the middle of launching six – that’s right, six – new websites for our client, Sepro Mineral Systems. Oh, and we’re launching all six websites in the span of two weeks.
Crazy, right? Maybe, but it’s not as crazy as you might think… as long as you have the right systems in place.
Even with one website to launch, there’s plenty that can go wrong. So let’s take a moment to some of the key tasks to double-check when launching any new web design project.
Are your contact forms really working?
It goes without saying, but your website is useless without leads or conversions. When launching your website, the number one thing to double-check is whether or not your website is really receiving emails. This sounds simple enough, but routing emails can get tricky.
It’s vital to double-check your emails. We can’t stress this enough.
If you’re testing contact forms, it is never enough for our team to drop in our own email addresses as the “receiver” for contact forms when testing. Testing has to be as close as possible to the real deal.
A very common malfunction for email forms is to drop emails sent between the same domain name. What does that mean? Simply, if the contact form sends emails from the email address noreply[at]seprosystems.com, and that contact form is sending those emails to info[at]seprosystems.com, then those emails are a high risk for being lost.
All of this can be avoided with the right website server configurations, but this is a common issue that’s too important to leave up to chance. That’s why we always test contact forms using the exact setup we expect for launch day. And then we test again.
Domain Name Servers and Redirections
Launching any fresh website design is an exciting, and necessary, part of doing business but launch day can be risky without the right redirection procedures.
If you’re starting over with a brand-new website, it’s important that your digital marketing agency does everything that they can to keep your search traffic flowing.
As a part of our web design process, we always perform search engine optimization benchmarking. This means that our digital marketers review all traffic from the old website, find the best-performing pages, and then work with our web developers to ensure that when the new website is launched all of those old pages are redirected to the new website’s most relevant pages.
Browser Compatibility
Okay, we might not all love Internet Explorer, or even Edge for that matter, but that doesn’t mean we can ignore the customers or clients that use these browsers. Our web design team knows that we need to show everyone a little love.
Every web developer has their favourite web browser to work in, and for them, it can be tempting to write their code, test in only that browser and call it a day. But a really cool website doesn’t just work in a single environment. Good websites are robust.
Browser compatibility testing is one of the most important steps before launch day. People access the web from anywhere, and our code has to meet that reality. That’s why whenever we code a new project, we test our websites in every major browser, device (phones, tablets, laptops and desktops), and screen size.
Like a messy storefront, a buggy interface is just unprofessional. Expect more from your website and find a team who does their due diligence in presenting your company to new customers.
Are you double-checking?
Everyone likes to think that they’re great at what they do, but we all make mistakes. Whenever we get ready for launch day, we don’t just go through these steps once. Checklists and procedures might bruise some peoples egos, but the headache they save will always be worth it. Everything important deserves a second look.
Do you have a favourite from this list, or another step worth adding? Let us know!
Stop by our marketing agency in Downtown Vancouver and let’s chat! (P.S. We always have chocolate.)