How to Write a Effective Plan For Any Website
Having a clearly defined web design and development strategy when plays an essential role in turning your website into a business-generating platform.
More Related Contents A website design checklist keeps the web design process on track, steering it toward success. We will explore how these checklists help businesses acquire high-converting websites and boost the productivity and efficiency of web design teams.
What's a Competitive Analysis & How Do You Conduct One?There are so many things to do in fact, that you’re bound to forget a few crucial pieces. To assist you during this hectic time, I decided to create a complete checklist for all of your brand and web design needs.
It covers everything from your logo to your business cards to your opt-in forms. So, let’s get started!
How To Define Your Ideal Customer Profile And Why You Should Use ItHow to Write a Effective Plan For Any Website
Brand Basics
Logo
Every small business needs a primary logo to ensure easy recognition and identification of their business by their target audience.
Logo Variations
A logo variation is your primary logo with design elements rearranged or simplified. Your logo variations, or secondary logo, are used when the primary logo isn't appropriate due to size restraints.
Favicon
A favicon is a small icon that appears in browser windows and web bookmarks. You’ll want to make sure you chose an icon that is square, on a transparent background, and includes minimal detail.
Social Sharing Icon
A social sharing icon is a logo that appears when you share a link to your site, most commonly seen on Facebook. Make sure this icon highlights your brand and attracts your target audience.
Color Palette
A color palette is a selection of hues that best represent a brand. With the use of color theory, a brand can effectively communicate with its ideal clients and increase brand recognition by creating a streamlined color palette.
Font System
A font system is similar to a color palette, as it is a specific selection of fonts that are selected to represent a brand. These fonts are used when designing the website, brand collateral, and any customer-facing documentation.
Brand Pattern
A brand pattern is a custom pattern design created with a brand in mind. These patterns help tie together an overall aesthetic and can be used on the website, brand collateral, and any customer-facing documentation.
Get Domain & SSL Brand Icons
Icons are traditionally small graphic elements that are used to provide information at a glance. In terms of branding, icons can be used for logo design, buttons, infographics, and more.
Web Design
Navigation
Depending on your template you might have multiple navigational options. Be sure to prioritize your navigation based on your audience’s priorities and natural flow through your website. For instance, your terms + policy shouldn’t be in your primary navigation.
Footer
A footer is a section at the bottom of your website that appears on each web page. Update your footer to reflect your brand and include your most important information.
Announcement Bar
An announcement bar shares a custom message and appears on each page of your site to promote a sale or business update.
Copy and content
Before you launch your site, you want to double-check all of your copy, hyperlinks, and content. Your website is a living document, so you can always edit post-launch, but you’d hate to launch your site and have a bunch of broken links.
Brand Visuals
Branded photography, graphics, and illustrations are a must-have for any website. They set the tone for your site, help communicate with your audience, and take a template site and make it custom!
404 Error Page
A 404 Error Page appears when someone clicks an inactive link or navigates to a missing page. Squarespace allows you to create a custom 404 Error Page to best serve your audience.
Opt-In Forms
An opt-in form is a form on your website used to collect the email addresses of your target audience. They typically are requested in exchange for a newsletter subscription or access to a resource library.
Social Icons
Your social icons allow you to promote your social media accounts. Link your social accounts to your Wix site to cross-promote your content.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization is the effort to improve your website’s visibility in search consoles. Wix has many options to help you improve your ranking.
Call-To-Action’s
A call-to-action or CTA is the act of encouraging a response from your audience. It can include anything from a “Work with me” button to a request for comment at the bottom of a blog post.
Contact form
Add a contact form to your website to enable your audience to get in touch with you.
Why Use A Web Design Checklist?
Using a web design checklist is important to make sure that your team doesn’t miss any deadlines and that each part of the project gets done efficiently, without overlooking any aspects.
During the web design process, there is a lot to keep track of and a website design checklist helps streamline the design and development phase.
Ways To Promote Your Business For Little Or For FreeWithout using a web design checklist, the team might forget some details, especially when the deadline is short and the web design process is completed in a rush.
Using a web design checklist helps ensure the process is smooth and comes with these added benefits:
The website is easy to use because the designers followed the UX and UI best practices
Messaging is clear and to the point because formatting has been double-checked and proofreading has been performed
Designers apply web design conventions by adhering to compliance standards
The website earns the audience’s trust through brand and voice alignment that web designers achieved through research and development
The website is safe because all backup and security precautions are in place
The online visibility is increased by following the SEO best practices
Results are measurable thanks to incorporated analytics
Website Design Audit Checklist: Items To Check Before Launching A Website
Design
1. Make sure the website is compatible with different devices and browsers
2. Validate HTML/CSS properly
3. Optimize scripts across all pages
4. Optimize images across all pages
5. Optimize CSS across all pages
6. Upload the favicon and make sure it renders properly
7. Make sure the paragraph styles such as quotes, lists, and headers are working correctly
Functionality
8. Check whether forms submit data successfully and a thank you message is displayed afterward
9. Make sure that form info is stored in a company database and is emailed to a recipient
10. Check to make sure auto-responders work properly
11. Ensure internal links across the website work properly
12. Ensure external links across the website work properly and open in a new tab
13. Make sure social media share icons work properly
14. Make Sure news, social media and RSS feeds are working properly
15. Check to make sure the company logo links to the home page
16. Ensure the loading page speed is optimized and kept at a minimum
17. Make sure that 404 redirect pages are in place
18. Make sure that third-party tools integrations run successfully
Content
19. Check the formatting of headers, lists, and paragraphs
20. Make sure the copyright date in the footer includes the current year
21. Place accurate company contacts on the website
22. Remove any generic placeholder content and replace it with proper content
23. Check if images, videos, and audio files are all in place and load properly on all devices
24. Make sure that downloadable content such as e-books and white papers work properly
25. Cite and license the proper rights to images, fonts, and other media
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SEO
26. Make sure web pages all have unique H1 titles and SEO titles that include keywords
27. Make sure unique meta descriptions for every page are in place
28. Place the metadata for any content in the RSS feed
29. Create a dynamic XML sitemap
30. Submit the dynamic XML sitemap to search engines
31. Check to make sure that page URLs reflect site information architecture
32. Place 301 redirects for old URLs
33. Put a rel=”no follow” tag for applicable links
Analytics
34. Insert analytics code on the website
35. Exclude relevant IP addresses from analytics tracking
36. Create funnels and goals in your analytics software
37. Sync the Google Webmaster and Google Analytics accounts
38. Sync Google AdWords and Google Analytics accounts
Backup & Security
39. Install monitoring scripts
40. Create a copy of the final website for backup purposes
41. Create and store backup copies of the website regularly
42. Keep passwords and other website credentials in a secure database
Compliance
43. Provide accessibility for users with disabilities
44. Let users know if your website uses cookies
45. Make the website compliant with usage rights for bought code, fonts, and images
46. Make the terms and privacy policies visible to visitors
47. If you’re processing and storing credit card info, make the website PCI compliant
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