Many people thinking that launching a website is as simple as clicking a computer mouse and basking in the gloriousness of your perfect live site.
Once you’ve created the website and added all the content, you’re only about halfway to a fully launched product. To take your website life, it’s necessary to undergo a number of tests to ensure proper functionality across a wide spectrum of activities. The stakes only get higher if you’re dealing with a large or popular website, with many pages to comb through.
No matter how excited you might be about an impending website launch, you should first make sure that there are no issues that may cause big problems in need of fixing once you’re already live. Go through this list of tests to check prior to launching a website they will help you to avoid mistakes.
Here you can find the most essential tests to run before launching a new website:
Readability Testing
Your text shouldn’t be too complicated and hard to understand, people will leave your page and return to the search results. But if your text scores a very low-grade level, users will likely assume that your content isn’t valuable. Both of these things can preclude site visitors from interacting with your content and contribute to a high bounce rate.
Make sure that content when launching a website is:
- Large enough to be read by your visitors;
- Split into readable chunks with short sentences, bullet points, and lots of white spaces.
Browser Testing
Browser testing is the process of verifying how your website looks in different major browsers, different versions of said browsers, and even on different operating systems. Browser testing a website is mainly done on desktop computers, as there’s a separate but important test for mobile responsiveness. The most important browsers for browser testing are Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
There are a number of tools for testing that you can use for a low monthly subscription fee:
- Browserstack tool offers a free trial and pricing starts at $29/month for the Live plan;
- Browsershots this tool is free, there is also a paid plan available for $29.95/month;
- Browser Sandbox this tool is free and upgradable to a paid version for only $4.95/month.
Mobile Testing
Mobile testing is now more important than ever when launching a website because Google launched mobile-first indexing focus as of late 2016.
If clients haven’t been asking for mobile ready websites before, it’s all but a requisite now. It’s in your best interests to create websites that are just as functional on mobile as they are on a desktop. If your website will be esthetic and mobile-friendliness enough than half of the search traffic will come from mobile devices.
You have to be sure if your theme work on mobile, text is easy to read on mobile, navigation is functional on mobile.
It’s best to start with Google’s own tests and definitions of mobile-friendliness Mobile-Friendly Test. This tool is the easiest and simplest tool for assessing any related issues.
Speed Testing
Your site shouldn`t load longer than 3 seconds it poses the risk that people will leave your website immediately—and never look back.
Remember, conducting speed tests should be executed intermittently as new content is added to your website. Optimize your website’s speed before going live. When someone had a bad initial experience with your website, they may never waste their time coming back.
There are tools helping you to check your website speed:
- Google’s PageSpeed Insights helpful for determining if your website is loading fast enough on the desktop and on mobile;
- Pingdom provides a number of additional insights for optimizing your website and offers a free trial, with paid plans starting at $11.95/month;
- GTmetrix tool for web developers trying to optimize page speed;
- Use a VEONIO website, they come with Hummingbird integration and seize all speed optimization opportunities.
Usability Testing
To conduct a usability test, give users certain tasks to complete and collect their opinions as to site functionality throughout the process.
You can also use helpful tools:
- Inspectlet tool for usability testing;
- User Testing premium option for companies with larger budgets.
Broken Link Testing
You may not know about broken links that exist on your website. They are a common element in need of fixing on new and old websites. Because of this, it’s important to fix link tests to make sure that all the links (both internal and external) are in working order, to contribute to the best possible user adventure.
I recommend you to check your website for broken links on a regular basis. In order to do that, you should use tools that will make the task easier.
Some tools you can use to test broken links:
- Broken Link Check: A free online broken link checker. No need to download an app, and no need to install a plugin. Just enter your website URL and check for broken links!
- Broken Link Checker (plugin): This WordPress plugin has over 500,000 active users. Because it’s a WordPress plugin, using this tool makes it easier to track broken links directly on your website.
- Xenu’s Link Sleuth: A free Windows app that scans the whole website for broken links.
- Screaming Frog: A popular SEO tool that looks for errors like broken links, with both a free and paid version (£149.00/Year).
You should always test your websites before you launch them. Do not launch a website first and then tests. This can be problematic if there are existing issues that you failed to check first, and guests are already starting to visit your website.
Do your due diligence in running some version of each of the aforementioned tests before launching a website to impress your users.
If you feel your web designer did not test your website properly because it is too slow, has broken links or is just plain bad to use – then it’s maybe time to get in touch with us to see how we can help you. You can rest assured, all our website come with top grades from Google in terms of speed and usability!
