When developing a new website, getting it ready to launch is a big moment. Months of work, design, and development come together to create something incredibly useful to your business. Because it’s such an important project, it’s essential to make sure everything is in working order. Here’s why you should test your website before launch:
Why Should You Test Your Website Before Launch?
There are a few reasons to test your website before launch:
1. First impressions are essential.
2. It can enhance user experience (UX).
3. It’s important for SEO.
4. It saves on post-launch costs.
5. It may prevent loss of revenue.
1. First Impressions Are Essential
When it comes to a website, first impressions happen so fast. If your website loads slowly or doesn’t work on a mobile layout, users may not stay on your website very long. Testing your website before launch can help you assess these issues before regular or potential customers get on your website.
2. It Can Enhance User Experience (UX)
User experience is vital for website design and better website engagement. It can also reduce bounce rates and encourage conversions. Before launching any website, you should think about UX.
Working some UX testing into your pre-launch checklist can help ensure everything is working as intended. Prioritizing speed and making sure your website works on all devices are excellent user experience tips to follow.
3. It Impacts SEO and Discoverability
When Google or other search engines rank sites, they take into account factors like usability, mobile optimization, and website page speed. If there are any bugs, poor layouts, or slow loading speeds, this can affect your discoverability. Testing these things before launch will give you a chance to improve any issues before your website is live.
4. It Saves On Post-Launch Costs
Catching bugs or improving loading speeds during pre-launch testing can save you money. Fixing problems, especially urgent issues, after a launch is typically more costly than before launch. There are a few website metrics to track, such as loading times and bounce rates.
Making sure these things are functional before your website launches can help reduce the need for any major fixes after launch. As a bonus, you can also get a good view of metrics around website performance pre- and post-launch to compare features and evaluate how the improvements you’ve made impact performance over time.
5. It May Prevent Loss of Revenue
If your website is also an ecommerce site, it’s especially important to test your website before launch. If a consumer is not able to navigate your website, browse products, or even complete a purchase, you can lose sales and even end up tarnishing your reputation. These are a few common ecommerce mistakes to avoid and should be taken care of before your website launches.
How to Test Your Website Before Launch
Testing your website before launch will take some time. Here’s how to test your website before launch:
1. Build and test your SEO strategy.
2. Test for user experience (UX).
3. Test for accessibility.
4. Evaluate and test your content.
1. Build and Test Your SEO Strategy
SEO is a great investment for your small business because it can help your website show up in more places, more often, in search engines. There are a few components to building your SEO strategy, and this should be done before your website goes live, especially because it will help inform things like how your navigation is structured and how content across your site is organized. There are a few common SEO optimization strategies to consider:
Make Sure You Have High-Quality Content
Having high-quality content on your website is crucial to your SEO strategy. Be sure to create high-quality content that’s based on relevant topics that are useful for your audience. Knowing your audience and prioritizing quality over quantity are some of the best ways to create content that stands out.
Optimize Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
It’s really important to make sure your title tags and meta descriptions are optimized for SEO. Title tags are the title of the webpage that shows up on search results, and meta descriptions summarize what’s inside the page. Using your keywords and keeping the description to 165 characters or fewer are some of the best tips for writing meta descriptions.
2. Test For User Experience (UX)
As your website is being built and before launch, once it is done, you need to test the user experience (UX).
Click Through the Site
Clicking through the website in a development environment can often help identify obvious functionality or usability issues. Going through your site as a potential customer and taking different pathways, while trying to complete specific tasks, can also help identify areas of potential friction that could cause frustration for users as they navigate your website.
By having multiple people do this, you can gain insights from different perspectives, as well. Doing this throughout the website build and before launch gives you the opportunity to fix user experience issues before the site is launched and live.
Focus Groups and External UX Teams
Another great resource for user experience testing is focus groups, where real users test out your website and get feedback for usability. If you don’t have your own UX team, you may need to work with a UX firm in order to get thorough UX testing.
If you have a UX team, work with them to develop a plan to choose tasks that users can complete on your website via wireframes or test environments. You can also use visual representations of your website’s functionality, structure, and layout.
As testers go through your website and answer questions and give feedback, the UX team and developers can refine the design to remove any problems or pain points. This can also help avoid expensive website redesigns in the future and create a customer-friendly website that people enjoy using.
3. Test For Accessibility
Much like UX, you should also test for accessibility. One of the biggest benefits of web accessibility is that it ensures anyone, including those with disabilities, can use the site efficiently and smoothly. Not only does this indicate thoughtful design, but it can help avoid legal issues, too.
Having a website designed for accessibility means everyone has an easy and smooth experience; it’s not just for those who have disabilities. Some questions to consider when making your website more accessible include:
- Do all images have alt text to provide context for people who have vision issues and rely on screen readers or other assistive technology? Alt text provides image context for blind people who rely on assistive technology like screen readers. Using descriptive alt text is also a helpful tip for better image SEO.
- Does your website have enough color contrast between the background and text for those who have color blindness or other limited vision?
- Does any video content have closed captioning or other captions so those with hearing problems can consume the content
- Does your website accommodate both keyboard and mouse navigation?
- Is it possible to zoom in and out on text on your website? This is important for those who have vision issues.
These are just a few questions you need to consider as you make your website accessible. For a more detailed list, consult an experienced accessibility designer or accessibility expert. You can also use web accessibility evaluation tools to help conduct testing.
4. Evaluate and Test Your Content
Good content is essential for any website. Before you publish content or your website goes live, you need to make sure your content is accurate, free of errors, and aligned with your brand.
Check Spelling, Grammar, and Brand Tone
Start by doing a general spellcheck and review of grammar. Using tools like Grammarly or other content marketing tools can help make this job a little easier. You should also make sure that your content sticks to the tone of your brand. This creates consistency and gives authority to your content and website.
Test Links
Making sure any internal and external links are functioning properly is another important part of testing content. Broken links make your website look less authoritative and can affect how your website ranks compared to others. This is why it’s an essential part of any SEO best practices guide.
Review CTAs
Another important aspect of content is your call to action statements. These are important because they tell your customers what you want them to do. The most simple call to action is “Buy now!“ because it tells your customer exactly what you want them to do. If you’re struggling to write successful calls to action, some of the easiest tips to follow are to always use a strong command word in your statements and be enthusiastic!
This is just an overview of why and how to test your website before launch. It’s important to test your website at different stages to make sure things are working and prevent issues down the road. If you were looking to redo a website or build a new one, contact MIND! We’ll build a functional and easy-to-use website that works for you and your business!