LAUNCHING YOUR WEBSITE CHECKLIST

When it comes to soft launching your website before you start promoting it, you want to go through a process of cross checking that all those moving parts and pages not only link together, but actually generate a sale or lead as the desired outcome. 

In order to do this follow these steps in reviewing the back end and front end user interface of your website, in order to ensure that you are leading your clients through your website experience in the desired way. 

1) PAGES REVIEW - Make a list of the webpages that you have to your site. Go into the front end url and forward a copy of each one to your mobile. Listen to each pages audio content. As it is being read out to you on your phone then make changes and amendments in the back end of the page. 

2) SEO / URL REVIEW - In each website page check that the details of the page are correct, that the url is what you want, that the SEO or Meta Description is correct and that you have uploaded an image, which also helps to rank your page. If you do change a url then ensure that you update the page links on any pages, that the page is connected to within your site. 

3) GOLDEN RULE / CHECK THE (UI) USER INTERFACE - As a golden rule check all link throughs on each and every page of your site.  Now this can be hundreds of link throughs, but if you don't do it, it has a two fold impact on your site:

• Broken links make for a bad user experience for you clients and you will loose business – When users click on links and reach dead-end 404 errors, they get frustrated and may never return.
• They devalue your SEO and page ranking efforts – Broken links restrict the flow of link equity throughout your site, which impacts your sites rankings negatively.

Your site will have many links on each page, but again just work through it page by page and check all the links on each page, end up with the desired outcome. 

Also check that the client can click right through to the cart or to a contact section that works. 

4) MOBILE DEVICE COMPLIANCE - Once you have completed steps 1 - 3 then review your webpages on your mobile, to ensure that any sentence that needs altering for mobile view has been corrected.  You will need to make back end alterations for long website hyperlinks and images or banner images are not sitting in the right order, or are overlapping the screen and need to be changed to a different format. 

5) TEST YOUR CLICK TO CART UI EXPERIENCE - Test purchasing a product or service from your site by temporarily changing the price of the product to 50 cents and then purchasing the product or services as if you are the client through the front end of your site.  I usually use a mobile device to do this so you don't get any cache memory issues from your desktop or laptop computer.  Otherwise you will find that your computer recognises you and doesn't show you the full user experience. Once you test the product or service then revert the price on the product or offer. NOTE: When testing a purchase ensure you use a different email account to the account linked to your domain. At the end of the client completing the purchase, ensure that you have a thank you page set up for that product or service.

6) TEST CLIENT/YOUR EMAILS - Review the emails received by you and the emails sent to the client, as a result of the purchase made and make amendments to suit as required. 

7) ONBOARDING CLIENTS - If you are on-boarding into a training programme, check you as the client can easily get into the specified training programme and view the content as the client. Ensure that all the areas of your training programme are visible to your client and that clear instructions are there for them to follow, as well as all the uploads of content that they need. 

8) TEST CONTACT SECTIONS - When it comes to onboarding people into medium to hight ticket training, then you may have a contact section to generate a person to client call in order to assess eligibility for the training programme, or as a part of your online sales strategy. Ensure that your calendar integration and emails to client work as a result of this and make sure that you have your script ready to go to guide your client through your evaluation process. 

9) TAKING CLIENT PAYMENTS - When it comes to taking client payments for medium to high ticket programmes, it may be easier to take a payment over the phone or set up a series of PayPal invoices if your client isn't totally tech savvy. Alternatively you can email them a link whilst you are still on a call and guide them through completing a payment, whilst you are still on a call.

If you are using another way eg over the call card transaction or PayPal invoice sequence then you will need to learn how to create a 100% voucher to on-board them into your programme. Ensure that you have tried to create a voucher and used it against a product to allow a client access to a medium to high ticket programme, if you have taken some other form of payment other than directly through your website. 

10) DOMAIN & SSL - Make sure that your website is pointing to your domain and that you have purchased your SSL certificate, so that when you hit launch you don't get listed in web browsers as an un-secure site.