How to Review your Website: A Checklist to Optimise Your Site Before Launch
Creating a website can be a stressful process - there’s a lot of things to consider. If you’re DIYinig your website, it’s helpful to have a checklist of things that need to be done and considered before your launch date. A pretty template isn’t enough to create a website that converts your visitors into customers or clients. Yes it may look great. But is it converting and getting you sales? Ultimately that is the purpose of your website. A great website requires a lot more than just good design. Use this checklist when setting up your website.
Colours, Logos and Brand Fonts
Make sure you are using all of your brand elements consistently.
One of the most powerful subliminal visual tools is the deliberate use of colour to influence user experience on a website. This is why branding strategy is an important step prior to designing your website.
Are the chosen colours easy on the eyes? Are you using neutral colours for the background? Or are you using bright red, neon green and yellow? Stick to the colours in your brand style guide and use them consistently.
Try to stick to no more than 3-4 different fonts on your website. One should be used for your header font, one for your accent/call to action font, and one for your body font.
Website Header
Does your website header explain what you do in five seconds or less? Make it very clear to your audience who you help, and the services you provide.
If it’s not clear what you do in five seconds or less, your audience may loose interest and exit before navigating through the rest of your site. Your goal is to catch their attention with your website header and keep them interested to engage further!
Imagery
When it comes to imagery a pretty picture can paint a thousand words, but it’s not always just about getting the aesthetics right. Do the images used, truly adds value to the message you are trying to convey to your audience?
Do you have any photos of you and your team? Remember, people like doing business with other people, so it helps to put a name to a face. If they feel like they know you, they will begin to trust you, and will be more likely to do business with you.
If you can, It helps to invest in a brand photographer. Alternatively you can always DIY this part at the initial stages. It can be as simple as standing in front of a nice background or a white wall, make sure there is good lighting, set your camera on timer mode or get a friend to snap some photos of you!
Do you have brand photography of your products and services? Not only do you need pictures of you and your team, but you should have images or mock-ups of your work to use on your website. If you don’t have brand photography just yet, create a gallery of imagery that aligns with your brand from websites such as Unsplash.
Copywriting
Do you have clear, engaging copy? When writing your copy, write it with your target audience in mind.
Populate your website with relevant, keyword-rich content that also allows easy visual scanning. Always aim to tell a story with your content. What is the goal? What are your visitors gaining from this?
Keep your tone aligned with your brand, and keep it consistent. If your copy on your social media captions is friendly and welcoming, keep the copy on your website friendly and welcoming.
Navigation
Make it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for. Give them multiple vehicles for accessing information. Provide a Search function, side navigation categories, footer navigation text links, top navigation buttons or tabs, whatever will make it utterly seamless for a user to move around your site, no matter where they start.
Contact Forms
Is it easy for customers to contact you? Either have your contact information listed, or have a contact form that is easy to find and fill out.
For example for us we want to filter out some leads to only get high-quality leads, so we made sure our contact form longer and we ask specific questions like “tell us more about your goals for this project.” If someone fills out this full form, we know that they are really interested in working with us, and not just price shopping around.
Mobile Friendly
Is your website responsive/mobile-friendly? Test it out on your mobile device before publishing. At least half of your website visitors will come from mobile, so it’s crucial to ensure everything looks great on the mobile version of your website too.
White Space
Do you have enough whitespace? This is something that a lot of website DIYers skip out on, and it’s extremely important for any website.
Between every section, use whitespace to break up the page so it’s easier on the visitors’ eyes. White space is an often undervalued commodity. But it’s a concept used throughout design and aesthetics. Think of it as breathing room. It’s like listening instead of always talking. It will allow your visitors to focus on what’s important. If every pixel is vying for your visitors’ attention, you will never get your key message across.
Call to Actions
A Call to Action, or a CTA, is a written directive that encourages website visitors to take the desired action, such as clicking a link or button. You should have them throughout your website, on every page.
Examples of Call to Actions:
I’m in!
Send me to the guide
Let’s work together
Inquire
Add to cart!
Testimonials and social proof
You could have the best copy and most beautiful photos in the world, but sometimes all a potential customer needs to see in order to decide to work with you are some testimonials from your past clients or customers. Reach out to a few of your favourite past customers and ask them to write a review or their experience working with you.
Freebie opt-in
Do you have a freebie opt-in? This is extremely valuable to start gathering email addresses for marketing purposes. Email marketing is an effective and high converting strategy.
Having a pop-up guiding visitors to input their email address to download your freebie. You could also have a resources page with all of your freebies, and in order for the audience to access them, they must leave their email address. Check out our example of what we have done here.
Privacy policy and terms & conditions
Have you linked your privacy policy and terms & conditions? Some website platforms, have these pages pre-filled out for you. You just have to swap out some information, like your business name.
Buttons and Links
Do all of the buttons and links on your website work? This should be one of the last things you do before publishing your website. Go through every page and make sure that every one of your links and button work.
Need some assistance building a high converting website? Let’s work together. Get in touch - hello@startupemporium.com
We love being generous with our brand building and marketing knowledge so we created a gallery of free helpful resources just for you! Our latest addition to the freebies gallery on Startup Emporium is here to help your website rank higher!
