Website launch checklist
Hey, I'm a Web developer living in Melbourne, raised in London with Polish roots. I have a passion for Computer Science and User Experience. Today I see myself as a seasoned Web developer with an eye for detail. I enjoy staying up to date with the latest web design trends and have the urge to push the boundaries of the web as we know it.
How can we guarantee that your website is launched in the best possible way? By following this checklist you can pat yourself on the back and have peace of mind that you have followed some essential web guidelines. This includes rules specified by the W3C, webAIM.org and Google.
It all starts off with following this checklist. Carry out these checks and your website will be in a good shape in terms of Accessibility, Search engine optimisation (SEO) and Website speed.
| Guide | Reference | Check |
|---|---|---|
| Follow proper heading hierarchy (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6) | Read more about semantic structure on webAIM.org | |
| All images have good descriptive alternative 'ALT' text | Read more about ALT text on webAIM.org | |
| All links have been checked and are not broken. | Check out this chrome extension to help check for broken links | |
| All images have descriptive filenames, hyphens indicate a word separator. | Read about Google's image publishing guidelines | |
| Anchors have meaningful text | Read the W3C guideline for providing link text that describes the purpose of a link | |
| All colors on backgrounds pass the Color contrast checker | Use the color contrast checker | |
| Forms have accessible elements. Meaningful labels using the for="" attribute. | Read about this guideline on the W3C website tutorial | |
| Forms have accessible elements. Meaningful labels using the for="" attribute. | Read about this guideline on the W3C website tutorial | |
| Validate the HTML used on your website | The W3C Markup Validation Service | |
| Google PageSpeed score above 80 | Get your PageSpeed score and use PageSpeed suggestions to make your web site faster | |
| Unique meta titles(70 character limit) | Matt Cutts from Google on creating good titles and snippets | |
| Unique meta descriptions(160 character limit) | Meta tags that Google understands | |
| Google web master tool site verification | Get started with Google web master tools | |
| Create and submit sitemap on Google web master tools | Sitemap XML format | |
| Crawl, fetch and submit new website pages on Google web master tools | Use fetch as Google for websites | |
| Add Google analytics code to website | Get started with Google analytics | |
| Use SVG where possible and images prepared for Retina | Why aren’t you using SVG? |