In today’s high tech world, a website is mandatory for your business to go global. A study conducted by 2014 State of B2B Procurement , 94 percent clients research online before conducting new business. But, what if I say, your global enabler might act as a deterrent and even lead to diminishing sales.

Normally all websites are developed and tested thoroughly, but these are some checkpoints which ensure seamless user experience and security. You must validate your business before the big bumper launch, sit back, relax and count the footfalls:

1. Proof Read the content: Employ fresh pair of eyes with native language skills. Professional proofreading brings clarity in your content so that it connects with your set target audience.
2. Aim to maintain uniformity across web pages unless your products demand differential treatment. Announce professionalism!
3. Eliminate spelling and grammar mistakes invite people to laugh with you and not on you!
4. Performance should be optimized. Users are not going to wait more than 10 seconds before hopping on to your competition.
5. Ensure Images and heavy size data is compressed.
6. Test performance over slow networks. Mobile version should be loaded for swift user experience. Don’t let sluggishness compromise with your business.
7. Search Engine Optimization: No doubt it is a continuous and never ending process thanks to the ever evolving algorithms of search engines. But, few parameters like relevant title tags, meta tags. Ensure sitemaps are available and submitted to search engines.
8. Monitor footfalls: You must measure and celebrate success of website. On the contrary work on underperforming pages. Commonly used tool like Google Analytics etc.
9. Backup website including database before launch. Schedule regular backups. A stitch in time saves nine.
10. Validate live URL’s before launch: Use tools like Screaming Frog SEO spider and check if all the pages are correctly pushed to production.
11. 404 page not found: Make sure you have a link to navigate users to your home page and it is clickable.
12. Stick logo using Favicon: An image says a thousand words. Why don’t we imbibe it in our URL. What a cool way to identify users with your brand logo. Developers are genius!
13. Ignore anything, but not a Sitemaps: I see some clients pushing Sitemap to future releases to save some time. Automate it using sitemap generation tools.
14. Ask your developers to include print enabled style sheets. It is a must if your web pages offer cool stuffs which educate your users. Add a ‘Print it’ crawler button.
15. Last but none the least, compliance to legal laws and regulations.  Example in the United Kingdom it is mandatory for website to declare cookies on the home page till the user clicks on ‘I Agree’. Consult a tech lawyer as laws keep on changing from time to time.

Note: This checklist covers points before launch. Please do not misunderstand it to be a list of points for validating your business site. Functional and non-functional testing should be part of whatever lifecycle your team follows.