10 Things to Remember When You Launch Your New Website

About to launch a new website? Refreshed your existing site? Added additional functionality or a new section? Find out what you need to remember before it goes live.

1. You'll need to make sure that you have a sitemap, and that it is complete. If you've been using a test site, or development server, then you might have used dummy data or products to fill your database, so you'll need to ensure that the sitemap includes the actual pages that will be live. Don't forget to update your XML sitemap and resubmit it to the search engines.

2. Ensure that your Robots.txt file is updated too. If your site structure has changed you'll need to make sure that the search engines are able to see all your pages.

3. If you're using analytics and tracking software, then this will need to be implemented on every page. Is it in your website template or CMS already, so that every new page can be tracked?

4. If you've renamed products, pages or categories on your new website, don't forget to use 301 and 302 redirects so links to the URLs for the old pages show the new pages. Check that these work, as you could lose a lot of traffic and links if the search engines can't find your new pages.

5. Don't forget to go through your code, and make sure that there are no commented out sections that should be live, and that there is nothing in the comments that shouldn't be there, and nothing inappropriate.

6. Make sure that there is no test copy or images as the site is about to go live. Perhaps you've created sections or pages that had Latin text or dummy images to show where the real text and images should go. Have these been replaced with the right text and images?

7. You'll need to make sure that all internal and external links work. Ensure that all internal links point to the live site and not a test site. You might have also changed the directory structure, so you'll want to make sure that everything works as expected. If there are external links on your site, you'll want to test them in case they've changed over the years, especially if they point to specific pages, rather than the homepage.

8. Remember to tell everyone involved when the new site is due to go live. This is so that they know to refresh their browsers in case a cached version exists and the new site isn't displayed.

9. Don't forget to make sure that everyone who needs to know how to use it does know how to use it. If you're introducing a CMS, as opposed to a static site, or are making use of databases, then users will need to know about any limitations or user access restrictions, so that they don't think there's a problem with the site.

10. Ensure that website administrators and those that will be updating the site know who to contact in case of a problem. A simple coding error, or file restriction could have disastrous consequences when the website is actually live. If you're accepting payments online, do you know how to contact the payment gateway company, or bank that processes your transactions? Now you know what to consider when your new website is about to go live, are you fully prepared?