That's it, you're going to press the red button to share your new website with the whole world!

But before putting it online and communicating its address during your next TV appearance, are you sure you haven't forgotten anything?

A site with spelling mistakes could harm your credibility and SEO.

Images that are too heavy could cause delays and cause your visitors to leave.

A poorly thought out user journey and your products could not find buyers.

Let's see together what are the key steps to check before launching!

Let’s see together the list of essential things to put in place before launching your site:

• Main user path: it must be possible to roll out the nominal scenario of use of the site, without encountering major problems and while being autonomous.

  If the site is an e-commerce, this means being able to complete the order process from start to finish.

  Unless you have a very specific target, this is valid on desktop and mobile versions, in night mode (or dark mode) or not.

  This is the bare minimum that your site must meet: if you send the link to someone who knows what he is looking for on the site, then the site must meet his needs.

  Particular attention will be paid to the textual content of the site: it is necessary to write in the language of the target and using a vocabulary that it masters.

• Hosting and Security: most browsers block sites that do not have an SSL certificate...remember to activate it!

  Remember to have a cloud architecture that is secure and scalable in order to cope with the traffic generated by your future television appearance;)

  Also remember to make backups if you ever have to restore a previous version of your site, database or cloud architecture.

• Legal: your site must comply with the law of the country in which it is launched.

  In France it is a question of having at least the legal mentions.

  If you are targeting European users, you will also need to comply with the GDPR by at least offering your visitors whether or not to accept cookies (if any) and by displaying your privacy policy on the site.

Although they are not essential for the proper functioning of the site, it is also important to monitor the following points and integrate them as soon as possible:

• SEO: for your site to be well referenced by Google, it will be necessary to work on your SEO.

  This translates into Technical SEO (site structure, loading time, sitemap...), on-page SEO (site content) and off-page SEO (backlinks, etc.)

• Analytics: the sooner you put Analytics (Google Analytics, Matomo, etc.) in place, the sooner you will have data to understand what your visitors are doing on the site.

• Favicon: it is important to have a favicon so that the visitor can easily identify your site at the level of the tabs of his browser

• Contact: Don't forget to allow your visitors to contact you via your website.

  This can range from a simple clickable email address to a chatbot or a contact form.

• Launch of the site: remember to communicate around the launch of your site and put the link in your signatures of emails, social networks, etc.

• Accessibility: remember to test the accessibility of your site to allow its use by visitors with disabilities, in particular with visual, auditory, cognitive, neurological disorders, etc.

We hope this checklist can help you launch successful websites!

Once the site is launched, you will have to continue to develop it and feed it with your news to increase natural referencing and the interest of your visitors.

Also, don't forget to update it and make it evolve over time to comply with new security standards, web design or even the laws in force (GDPR, cyberscore, etc.).

Do not hesitate to write to us at partners@blacksmith.studio if you wish to be accompanied on these subjects :)