What makes a good website checklist depends upon person to person, and type to type.
The perfect website design is accomplished by keeping the creative inner of yours out in the wild but there are a few steps you cannot mean to bypass.
Skimming over those steps, even the greatly-designed website will dearly lack in retaining the proper functionalities. If that’s going to be the case, you are down dead with your website!
So, this website checklist has to be met anyways. Things to do before launching a website are mentioned below.
Who Should be Developing and Designing Your Website
Before dwelling on the core of what makes a good website design, we should stress enough the point of who should be doing all the development and design for your website.
This is the crucial step for sure and rather demands a profound skillset to achieve the site development/design.
The skill could comprise;
- Development/Programming
- Graphic Designing
- Content/Copywriting
- SEO
What we can suggest is that you should be shooting all these tasks yourself because you are the one who better understands the importance of your site niche/topic and accomplish the best design that you expect your site to look like.
But wait… Do you hit all these skills with great knowledge and experience? Hardly any. And there are hardly a few lads in the world bearing the best of all these mentioned skills.
So, the best way to go with hiring the agency, and talking out all the information and requirements to portray what you seek out of your website.
Going with an agency could be an expensive task but that’s worth it when you do not possess the prior skills to create a good website from scratch.
Without being technical, you should still possess good command over these areas to validate how your website is coming along from the agency you hired.
Being a total novice will be harmful to you to manage the site afterward. And depending on everyone just for the sake of running the site is a foolish idea (sorry for the words…) It is better not to own/make a website.
Again — this website checklist is just for your good self as trusting blindly someone experienced can cost you a severe level.
Showcase your level of experience even though you are not! 🙂
What Makes a Good Website Checklist
The good website review checklist is what matters down the line — one that looks good to the site owner does not mean it would be serving the definitive purpose of being associated with a specific niche just because the site owner likes it.
A website has always (and always) has to serve;
- A purpose;
- A reason for being a website.
The whole of this introduction might not be catching up with the topic but the fact is, we do want you to grasp the idea of what should be a good website all about.
1- Researching the Niche
Researching the niche for your website should be your top-most priority and take no one’s help on this part.
Find the niche yourself be it an affiliate, AdSense, and anything.
However, the professionals also offer this niche research service which you can avail of your assistance but we recommend picking the niche by yourself.
2- Picking the Domain Name
What is the purpose of your website?
- Is it a macro site?
- Transform the site to cover the micro niche.
- Or good at crafting the brand?
Macro somewhat indicates the branding thing but does not really represent the domain to be branded enough.
A microdomain name is exactly specific to the micro-niche.
And brand domain name may not give a glimpse of your niche but it could be any random name that you would love to use for your website.
If you are looking for a domain, You can visit Namecheap
3- Choosing the Web Hosting
The third and most important aspect of the website checklist is choosing the web hosting provider.
And there involve many more aspects to look for when the plan is to run a money site;
- The type of hosting account (shared, VPS, and dedicated) depends on the size of our website having the concurrent users, MySQL database size, and the sort of content going in
- Server location (most prefer the U.S.A.) but it also depends if the site is international or local
- Pricing
- Support
The brand web hosting providers are the good ones to trust. But technical issues may arise over time that is not avoidable.
While you can obtain some cheap-priced web hosting plans which may hit badly in the meantime. So, money sites and the sites that you opt to be running online 24/7, not try the low-priced (cheap) web hosting companies to avoid the unbearable inconveniences.
4- Installing Blog System
Go with the wind, go with the world, and install WordPress.
Still, you have the options to pick from;
- Drupal
- Ghost
- Nucleus CMS
- Dotclear
- And many more…
5- Site Logo and Site Icon (Favicon)
Part of your brand/site identity, the site log and site icon (alternatively called a favicon) are the must-to-have.
Get the logo that suits your website serving the purpose. And the favicon should also be reflecting the same theme as your overall site color and identity.
6- Creating the Different Pages
See the one thing? The pack of different important pages for your website that needs to be going up there.
But the stuff on the homepage should be unique and original, try adding no lies IYKWIM! 🙂
Let’s dive into it real quick;
HomePage
- Created the website just for blogging purposes?
- Selling digital services?
- Dealing with offline products?
- Representing your business/company through the website?
First off, find out the correct answer/purpose but let us give you a quick outlook of how you should be setting the homepage for different websites.
Blogging Site
Having the site created for blog/affiliate, set the homepage to show your latest posts.
Somehow, webmasters also opt for setting the specific home page and the blogs/latest posts on another page just to give a professional look to their blog/affiliate site.
Digital Services Site
Make your homepage display the digital services right on the front page. And craft the homepage per your intention and apply the design of your free will. 🙂
Offline Products Site
Offline products site a.k.a., the eCommerce site needs to have the potential to catch the customers right from the beginning.
But do not list all of your products on the page. Rather, go with the most-reviewed, and most-sold products, and then show the top-rated categories running with the carousel of your favorite products you need the customers to buy from going down at the category level.
Business/Company Site
Show your brand, show the purpose of your company/business, history, and all right from the convenience of your homepage. Although, no fancy in it to keep it simple and precise.
About Us Page
What are you? Your site? Your purpose? And the motive to start the site?
It is important to showcase to the world what you got.
Introduce your motive, your reasoning, and the team, of course, by taking advantage of this most required page.
Contact Us
Whether or not you are a company to show your mailing address, the reason to create the Contact Us page is critically important to give your visitors the option to come in contact with you.
Selling anything or making the site solely to spill the information down the line; do not forget to create a Contact Us page by embedding the contact form (at least!)
Or if your website reflects the corporate purpose or builds to represent your business, give not only the mailing address but also the Google Maps location and the contact form just in case.
FAQs Page
Especially for digital and offline businesses, the dedicated FAQs page is one important part of your checklist.
Terms & Conditions (T&C) Page
Unlike the FAQs page, the Terms & Conditions page will be the perfect option to show your visitors/customers the terms and conditions they will be entitled to after consuming and purchasing off your website.
Do not miss out on this page especially when your website serves a commercial purpose.
Custom Create 404 Page
Every site comes with a 404 Not Found Error page but create one with your custom message to represent your creativity.
404 Error page often woos away the visitors, so embed some links to your homepage and the possible-popular pages to retain the visitors coming towards your site and help to optimize the bounce rate.
7- Featuring the Cross-Device Responsiveness
Well, this responsive feature is something else than your projection.
Responsive in the sense the site first is optimized for all the devices.
So, make sure the site supports rendering well on devices like iPhones, Android, Tablets, Computers, Laptops, and everything.
Furthermore, you can check it using an online responsive testing tool like BrowserStack.
8- Keep Up with the Best Security
Do not compromise on this part. The site setup and design will never ever ensure the best security.
The backend needs to be secured enough which can be achieved without any hassle.
Let’s tick the following checks;
- Has your website got an SSL?
- Using the security plugins like WAF (WordFence Security) if particularly using WordPress as your site software?
- Using a username other than ‘admin’?
- Created a strong and non-generic password you created by yourself and not generated using the auto-generated password creators?
- Keeping up with the latest version of your site software plus the plugins?
Evaluate these steps to ensure the best security of your website!
9- Set Up the Proper Back-Up
This is the part your web hosting provider could cater to but you can also take care of it as well for double safety.
While asking and ensuring the backup thing with your web hosting provider, get the backup plugins set up for your site (free or paid) as well as you can also download the backup directly on your machine intermittently.
The backup system seems an unnecessary part when the site is running normally but the worst could happen anytime without giving you a warning sign. So, keep up with the backup, please to avoid the unfortunate inconvenience.
10- Speed Optimization
Not forgetting this crucial part, the speed optimization of your website has to be less than lesser (hit between 2 to 3 seconds) but the ideal page load time is always and always < 1.5 seconds despite the website type.
Improve your website’s performance with our “What Makes A Good Website Checklist.” Don’t forget to check your page speed using Google PageSpeed Insights.
11- Image Size and Lazy Load ‘Em
Either use. PNG or. GIF images but make certain the size remains below 150 KB, however, this may make the image quality discreetly fall but that is something you could live with a bit of compromise.
And lazy-loading the images is crucial. This does not necessarily load all of the images when the pages load up and when the visitors scroll down, that will indicate the server to load the image by then keeping the bandwidth within limits.
When uploading the images to your content, do not forget to give them the name as your main keyword and to the ALT TAG as well. This way, your images also serve the same purpose as your keyword indicating the best optimization towards the content.
12- Feed in the Best Content
A healthy and remarkable website requires the best content to keep the visitors intact and consume the information you are spilling all around.
So, no compromise on providing the best content, and we cannot further stress the importance!
13- Play With the Best SEO
SEO is in no way possible without content, and the content written by keeping the best SEO practices would double the fun and value of your website.
Go with the best SEO, clean and legal strategies to witness the natural growth of your website!
Conclusion!
So, these 13 processes certainly provide what makes a good website checklist to outlive the competition.
Give your best shot to make a perfect and ever-growing website which would eventually take some time to grow but that would be worth your time.
Play safe, stay safe!
Don’t forget to know How To Charge a Laptop Battery Manually While optimizing your website. Because you may gotta run out of your battery while implementing a long checklist 🙂
