8 Things Web Designers Forget When Launching A New Site

• July 4th, 2011
• Articles

A collection of ten common mistakes which web designers regularly tend to forget when launching a brand new websites. This is a collection of common mistakes but also a great check list of tasks which need to be performed in order for website to be completed.

1. Setting up Google Analytics

Analytics software not necessary Google analytics but it’s the best anylictical software. Google analytics is something which is essential to increase visitor’s growth to that specific website, alongside allowing you to gain a general understanding upon how many people have visited that specific site, how many page views etc over a period of time.

2. Cross Browser web testing

There a are so many web browsers available these days and not every user chooses to use the same browser, therefore it’s important that cross browser testing has been done to ensure that the output of a website is the same in each browser which the website is displayed within i.e. the website functions and displays perfectly in Firefox and the same in another browser such as Google Chrome.

3. Mobile Testing

A lot of users these day have Smartphone’s which allows them to view websites on their mobile. Since a high percentage of users view website content on a mobile its important that the websites has been tested on a mobile and functions correctly. Most modern day web designers tend to create a mobile version of a website in order to cator for users who may be viewing the website from a mobile, this is a great way to ensure website works efficiently on a phone.

4. An 404 error page

You may be unaware that your website has a broken link or may be even within future a broken link will occur within the website. It’s difficult to prevent broken links but its super easy to setup 404 error page. A 404 error page gives some sort of direction where to go if they vist a page which doesn’t exist or may be contains a broken link.

5. Meta Description

For each page within your website it should ideally have a meta description for each page and also keywords. This will help search engines to locate your websites and display it dependent upon what a user types in to their search engine.

6. Fav icon

A fav icon is something which is overlooked massively within web design. A fav icon is essential because it brands a fav icon, therefore when users are multi browsing they can easily establish which website is your site by simply looking at the fav icon within the tab of the browser.

7. Site map

Adding sitemap directory to root folder of the website will help the website to get indexed by search engines. Being indexed in search engines can drive a decent amount of traffic to your website alongside making new visitors aware of your website.

8. Valid HTML

Valid html is simply HTML which validates by W3C. Having good valid HTML makes it easy to understand the html code. Valid HTML is also good practice and professionalism for web designers code which validates also is good for search engine optimization(SEO).