Larsen Idealog

Launching your website

Getting ready to launch a website? Here are a couple of checklists to help ensure that everything goes as smoothly as possible.

Before Launch

1. Make sure you have a statistics package installed. If you don't, consider Google Analytics, it's powerful and best of all free!
2. Take a literal & statistical snapshot of your site. Before and after views of traffic numbers and look and feel can be valuable to illustrate your success to others.
3. Check your site for broken links. Dead-links.com is a free service that is appropriate for smaller sites.
4. Try not to break old URLs. Pre-existing pages are bookmarked by your visitors as well as indexed in search engines. Nobody is happy when they expect content and are instead faced with the dreaded 404 page.
5. If you do break URLs, setup redirects to relevant new pages. This is a must for at least your high-trafficked pages.
6. Setup a good 404 error page . Sony and HP are both great examples.

Post Launch

1. Submit to major search engines. Google, Yahoo & others encourage submissions.
2. Promote your site. Include your URL in your email signature, forum posts & conversations with strangers. Send out a short announcement email to friends & colleagues.
3. Watch your statistics. It will let you know valuable information about your audience and help you measure the health of your web initiatives.
4. Don't forget about your site map and copyright notice. These are the first things that get out-of-date.
5. Celebrate. Have a party! Thank your design firm