10 Key Tasks For Your Next Web Site
Last year I wrote about 12 essential web site building blocks — things that you should check when you take on responsibility for a new web site, or even just launch one.
Well, this year I've come up with a few more, mostly as a reminder to me for the next site that I'll be running.
Establish a Baseline
If you're going to show the impact you've made on your organization's web sites, you'll need a point of comparison to start from.
1. Capture Everything
You want to be able to show how things were before you started making improvements. So take screenshots of your site, as many as you can. Also take screens of how your site ranks in search engines for branded and non-branded keywords.
If you're a coder, take screenshots of your site's source code. In six months time you can show how much cleaner you've made it. Take screens of how well your pages validate, how accessible they are, etc. Run a page load speed test and take screens of the results.
2. Usability Testing
Run some quick 'guerrilla' usability tests of your site with friends and family or other employees. Video the results. Not only will this help to establish a baseline of usability for your site, but it will help you to become more familiar with it and identify some usability-related quick wins.
3. Site Monitoring
Set up some goals and conversion funnels in your analytics tool — easy to do if you're using Google Analytics. Make sure your website up-time is being monitored by using a tool such as Montastic.
Start tracking how your site ranks on search engines. Set up your site in Digital Point's free search engine keyword rank tracking tool so that you can see how your site is performing over time.
Quick Wins
Establish yourself as someone who gets things done and start making an impact by getting some easy fixes under your belt.
4. A/B Testing
Set up a quick A/B test on a popular page (not necessarily your home page; find one that's easier to make changes to) and share the results internally. Stakeholders love data-driven decision making.
5. Identify Underutilized Pages
Some highly-trafficked web pages are all too often viewed from a purely functional standpoint. Try adding a promotional area to your account log in page or site map. Or how about adding some calls-to-action on your newsletter sign up confirmation page?
How useful is your footer? Does it contain links to your social media URLs and other important destinations?
6. Review Automated Emails
Review the automated emails that are sent out when someone signs up for an account, forgets their password, etc. Can they be made more useful and/or user-friendly? Chances are they haven't been looked at in a while and could do with an update.
Familiarize Yourself
You need to become intimately familiar with all aspects of your site as soon as possible.
7. Learn Your Site
Click through most, if not all, the pages on your site(s). Become familiar with what's out there and any navigational and IA issues. Sign up for your site's email newsletter using an account from each of the main email providers.
Speak with team members and stakeholders to learn the history of your web site and the reasons for certain design decisions.
8. Know Your Popular Pages
Review the most popular landing pages on your site, especially the ones with the highest bounce rate. Are there any obvious quick fixes that can be made?
Read through the content on these pages — chances are there are readability improvements to be had, if not grammatical and typographical errors to be fixed.
Get Organized
The more organized and structured you can be from the get-go, the better.
9. Team Email Address
Set up a general web team email address and use this for creating accounts with any online tools and services. Start encouraging internal employees to use this address for web requests and inquiries. Add it to your email signature.
10. Record Accomplishments
Start keeping a record of everything that you do. This makes it much easier at annual review time. A good way to ensure you do this is to send a weekly update of your accomplishments for that week and goals for the next to your supervisor. They'll love this.
Posted on: November 6, 2009 | 36 Comments
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36 Comments Posted (Add Yours)
Thank you for the pointers. This will really be helpful.
1. Posted by teena, www.uverse.com on November 07, 2009
Excellent blog. I thing site Navigation is pivotal in great website design!
2. Posted by Website Design on November 08, 2009
11 (or 0?). Security design and testing
3. Posted by Clerkendweller on November 08, 2009
Some great pointers here. I love the diea of screen capturing everything you do before you forget it all! I'll have to start doing this.
4. Posted by Stu @ Web Design London on November 09, 2009
Interesting thanks
5. Posted by Tony on November 09, 2009
These are very good ideas. very short and to the point. Sometimes it is hard to follow long lengthy descriptions. I plan to use these to help improve my SEO. Thanks!
6. Posted by Scott Lassiter on November 10, 2009
Really good thanks, planning is always the key.
7. Posted by duffman on November 10, 2009
Really great article. Thanks for posting. Very interesting!
8. Posted by Karl on November 11, 2009
Some good tips there, some of it is a tad overkill though, especially to do for every site. For example - videoing responses!
It's good to get a grasp of usability and user interaction, but I think there are better ways.
All in all though, some good advice!
9. Posted by James on November 13, 2009
video responses seems a little too much to deal with, but maybe this is a web 2.0 new trend
10. Posted by John Zagurasky on November 15, 2009
Some good points and some over the top points, in my opinion ;)
I don't think video records of UX is very important. More so, an understanding of it as a web designer and being able to implement it.
11. Posted by Evan Skuthorpe on November 16, 2009
Great blog !!! just wonderful thanks for posting
12. Posted by Web Design Template master on November 17, 2009
This is a great list for anybody new to the Web Development world. All of these key things you have touched on are very important factors when it comes to the functionality of your website.
13. Posted by Tampa Web Design on November 17, 2009
Nice post! Thanks for putting this together!
14. Posted by Alberto on November 18, 2009
Interesting list, gurella useablility testing is a really good idea, especially for sites aimed at the average web user, or, depending on who you get to do the testing, beginners to the web.
Thanks,
Shane
15. Posted by Shane on November 19, 2009
These are some very important points, some of which I have never even considered. I can't wait to review my own website using these points. Thanks for the advise.
16. Posted by Wayne Farley on November 24, 2009
A really handy list mate, as with many other people I had not considered quite a few of them so its definitely going to be revisited!
Big thanks for taking the time to compile it!
Ryan
17. Posted by Ryan Mcfarlane on November 27, 2009
I especially like your third point. Downtime is quite important.. Every visitor counts! And downtime percentage is often higher than one would think.
18. Posted by Mark on November 27, 2009
I constantly have to check and update!
19. Posted by 91754 on November 28, 2009
Some Great Adivce here.
I will have a new website soon.
20. Posted by tom coad on December 04, 2009
Something I do when I have a first build of my site is to post a link to friends / family on Facebook, and ask them to have a quick look. This irons out a lot of problems quite quickly as they will find the most basic mistakes and usability issues that you miss as a designer.
21. Posted by Basic Websites on December 06, 2009
Usability Testing! Great ideas!
22. Posted by Og on December 07, 2009
Great point about Popular Pages. Understanding WHY your landing page has a high bounce rate will help you design more effective ones for the future.
23. Posted by Qoptimize on December 08, 2009
there should be some point included like -
project planning
requirement gathering
making a SRS
and all points are nice.
24. Posted by drupal development services on December 10, 2009
Montiroing the website is vital but often overlooked by busy site owners. Managing any website is a time consuming affair. However it is improtant to monitor your website at all times. I personally look at my google analytics stats and other more real time statistics on a daily basis and try to use the feedback to adapt my website to the needs. Doing this has helped my site and business a lot.
25. Posted by Web Design London on December 10, 2009
Great checklist, thanks for taking time to remind all of us to check our progress, especially when taking over previously built sites.
26. Posted by Aaron Amstutz on December 10, 2009
Great post here!
All ten of these tasks can help anyone that has a web site, great value! I really need to start familiarizing myself with my web site. That task really hit home for me. I am going to go through all these tasks and see which apply and don't apply with my site and make the adjustments.
I am glad I came across this post, the content here will help me tremendously! I will be back visiting very often, look forward to the next post.
Jason Braud
27. Posted by Oxford MS Web Design on December 11, 2009
I think google analytics should be on there, its a great tool and shows you whatever information you want!
28. Posted by web design wakefield on December 11, 2009
#1 says it all - you can never be too careful about documenting all the requirements of a project before you get started. But really, all of these points are good, and #5 and #7 are rarely identified. Good job.
29. Posted by washington dc web designer on December 12, 2009
These are some very important points, some of which I have never even. it is very helpful for web development and web designing.
30. Posted by Web Designing Company Mumbai on December 19, 2009
Great reminder about taking captures - particularly of the coding.
Captures of the appearance is great for comparing, but having the old coding could be priceless.
Thanks for the reminder.
31. Posted by Andy on December 21, 2009
Good tips. Everyone should follow these guidelines and emphasise more on accessibility.
32. Posted by Web Design from Lyons Solutions on December 27, 2009
Capturing for every thing is a good idea for me. Thanks for your nice tips..
33. Posted by website design india on December 28, 2009
very interesting thanks a lot
34. Posted by webdesigner on December 30, 2009
Thanks for sharing some great ideas..!!
35. Posted by London Website Designing on January 08, 2010
Great information in this post, especially the last tip where you should write your accomplishments down. I normally just go from memory when I encounter a similar situation CSS but it is easy to forget some of the finer details.
36. Posted by Ben on February 08, 2010