Plastic Surgery Marketing Materials: The Website Checklist
Before launching or re-launching your website, it's important that you double check for any errors or problems. You don't want to post your website with errors, but rather find those errors and fix them first. The following is a website checklist focusing on technical issues that are important to consider before launching your website.
- Know your Web host. It's very important that you understand just what you're getting from your hosting company, including your monthly bandwidth limits and any costs or fees for exceeding those limits. Other considerations include the company's policy on CGI scripts, the amount of server storage you're allowed, and whether or not you will have access to server logs. Also be sure that you carefully examine and understand the guidelines in your Terms of Service.
- Check your load times. Slow loading pages are one of the main complaints cited by Internet users. Don't assume that all visitors to your site will have fast broadband connections. Instead, ensure that your pages load quickly regardless of a user's connection. Ideally, your homepage should load within ten seconds or less and your internal pages within fifteen seconds or less.
- Make it easy for visitors to contact you. By including your contact information your phone number and a contact link at a minimum on every page of your site, you not only make it easy for visitors to contact you, you also increase your credibility in their eyes. You should also have a contact page which includes your street address, phone and fax numbers, email address, mailto link or contact form, and any other necessary information.
- Test your pages. Be sure to test your web pages on different monitors and operating systems, at different screen resolutions, and in different browsers to ensure that your website looks and functions properly for the majority of your visitors.
- Spell check. Make sure to check your pages for spelling and grammar errors and correct any that you find. They're easy to miss but they can seriously hurt your credibility. Pay special attention to your contact information to ensure that it is correct.
- Double check hyperlinks. Check all links within your site to ensure that they're working properly. Broken links are a sure way to frustrate your visitors and send them elsewhere. Double check all links on your navigation system, all internal text links, mailto links, and external links to other websites.
- Ensure usability. Make sure that all visitors to your website can access your important content. If necessary, modify your multimedia files and add alternate text links to pages with dynamic menu systems. Also be sure that plug-ins and JavaScript are not required by your visitors in order for them to view your site. You can also get real people to use your site to test it for usability.
- Customize your own error page. When errors with your pages occur, visitors typically get a standard 404 File Not Found' error page. Though you cannot completely avoid errors, you can soften the impact by creating your own custom error page that gives visitors important information that helps to keep them on your site. Your error page should include a link to your homepage or the previous page, as well as a way for visitors to easily report broken links.