What happens after your lightbulb moment of starting a website-based business in the Middle East? You hire a website development agency in dubai, design its UI and UX, and develop the frontend and backend, integrate the APIs and set up online payment methods. But the smartest work on your part as a website business founder starts right here. After development, your website is not typically 100% ready to publish.
To set it up for success, you need to ensure:
- It is battle-tested for performance, mobile responsiveness and computability
- It is optimized for search engine so your target visitors can discover it
- It performs well after being published
To help you with everything in this list, here is a checklist that will make your website launch-ready. Let’s start!
Post-Development Website Testing
Cross-Browser Compatibility
- Test the website on different browsers to ensure consistent performance and appearance.
- Google Chrome
- Firefox
- Safari
- Edge
- Check compatibility on various devices to ensure responsiveness.
- Desktop
- Laptop
- Tablet
- Mobile
Functionality Testing
- Test all interactive elements to ensure they work as intended.
- Buttons
- Internal and external links
- Forms
- navigation menus
Do this after dividing your sprints or KPIs into web pages – for example, start with a group of primary pages like home, about us and contact pages. Then check privacy policy and terms and conditions. Then group together 5 to 6 service or product pages and manual check one by one.
- Verify functionality of contact forms, subscription forms, and any other user input fields.
- Test multimedia elements such as videos and audio players for playback and volume control.
Content Review
- Proofread all written content page-wise for correctness, grammar, and spelling errors.
- Ensure all images and media files are displayed correctly.
- Check if all images are optimum size and optimized for decent loading speed.
- Verify that all content is aligned with the brand messaging and is consistent throughout the website.
Navigation Testing
- Test website navigation to ensure users can easily find information and navigate between pages. Here, you can rate and comment page-wise on a scale of 1 to 10.
- Verify that all internal links and navigation menus are working correctly. These links and menus should direct users to the intended destinations.
Forms and Transactions:
- Test all forms, especially contact forms and checkout forms, to ensure they submit data successfully.
- Test if all forms generate a thank you message showing the receipt of information.
- Test if users receive a confirmation message or email when they submit a form.
- Verify that e-commerce transactions (if applicable) process accurately. Check further by adding items to the cart, checkout, and payment processing.
Performance Testing
- Check website loading speed using two tools and optimize if necessary.
- Google PageSpeed Insights
- GTmetrix
- Test website performance under different network conditions to analyze the loading times.
- 3G
- 4G
- Wi-Fi
Security Testing
- Verify that SSL certificates are installed and working correctly to ensure secure data transmission.
- Check for vulnerabilities and ask your web developer to address them promptly.
- broken links
- deprecated libraries
- insecure and cracked plugins
SEO Checks
- Verify that meta tags are correctly implemented for each page.
- Title
- description
- keywords
- Check for proper heading structure and keyword optimization throughout the content.
- H1
- H2
- H3
- FAQs
- Ensure XML sitemap and robots.txt files are present. Configure them correctly for search engine indexing.
Accessibility Testing
- Test website accessibility for users with disabilities using tools like WAVE or axe.
- Check proper implementation of alt text for images
- Check descriptive links for screen reader users.
With all these checks in place, your website is ready-to-publish. Also, if you have outsourced your business website to a full-cycle web development company in Dubai, they typically perform all these manual and automated checks and will deliver you a documented result of testing as well. App development companies in dubai offer these services for mobile applications with great and advanced methods.
Post-Launch Maintenance
Once your web developer has deployed the website and published it, you have to rigorously test its performance on search engines and record its responsiveness with the real visitors. Typically web development companies provide a FREE post-launch maintenance period during which they resolve technical queries and bugs identified in the code and functionality. I still recommend website development agency in dubai owners perform these checks to ensure their homework is done.
Website Performance
- Monitor website loading speed and overall performance using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights.
- Verify that all website functionalities, including forms, navigation, and interactive elements, are working correctly in the live environment.
- Test any additional features or plugins added post-launch to ensure they function as expected.
Content Accuracy
- Regularly review and update website content to ensure accuracy and relevance.
- Check for any broken links or outdated information and update them accordingly.
Security Monitoring
- Implement regular security scans and audits to detect and mitigate potential vulnerabilities.
- Monitor website logs for suspicious activity and bot traffic.
SEO Performance
- Monitor website traffic and search engine rankings using tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
- Analyze keyword performance and adjust SEO strategies as needed to improve visibility and organic traffic.
User Feedback and Analytics
- Gather feedback after 20 days from users through surveys and feedback forms. You can distribute these forms via websites or social media channels.
- Analyze website analytics data to track user behavior, conversion rates, and engagement metrics.
While this checklist works wonders in identifying issues before you are about to publish and launch, you can use it as your blueprint for audit even after launch and for on-going quick maintenance checks. While these checks are important for building a digital presence, you can add SEO measures, like on-page audits, technical audits, schema markups and URL checkup to improve the discoverability of the website as well. All in all, the goals of all of your audit and analytics processes should be to provide an engaging, and mobile-responsive experience to your visitors.