eCommerce Site Launching Checklist

photo © 2008 Giuseppe Leto Barone | more info (via: Wylio)I can’t tell you enough how important this list is. Take my word for it, this comes from experience being involved at a company in the past that seemed to care little about doing this. I promise you, if you do not run through a checklist you will be spending many frantic hours after launch putting out fires and dealing with upset clients.

I want to add you should run through a list like this for any site upgrade or feature roll-out. And with every new launch, upgrade, enhancement add new items to your checklist.

You can never do enough testing when launching a new website. Then again, you do need to launch the website, so you can’t test forever! Follow this simple checklist before you launch your new eCommerce website, and save yourself from silly mistakes!

* Have the home page SEO fields been updated?

* Is Modrewrite setup?

* Has the favorite icon been created?

* Has a new newsletter template been designed?  – Has a post launched meeting been scheduled with team?  – Have homepage Alt tags been updated?

* Is the print this page template working?  – Has the error 404 page been designed?

* Have old urls been mapped to new ones?  – Has sample data been deleted – accounts, orders, products, news, etc?

* Have gift certificates, promo codes and affiliate been checked/migrated?  – Has your shipping zip code and state setup in shipping settings?

* Has a Robots.txt file has been created?

* Have PPC links been updated?  – Have all the site email templates been updated?

* Has a data verification process been implemented (missing product images, prices, sku’s, etc…)

* Are nameservers ready to be switched over to new host?

* Has your old website been backed up?  – Has a social sharing button like AddtoAny.com been added to the site?

* Has the Facebook/Twitter buttons been added to the site (home, product, category, and content pages)?

* Make sure: taxes, locations, promotions, gift certificates, etc.. have been verified.

Make sure to test your browsers in all the various popular internet browsers and operating systems. Subscribe to a third party service that specializes in multi-variant testing on various platforms.

Review “Waterfall Graphs”. These performance graphs provide helpful details about the loading speed of each element of your website. These graphs should be carefully reviewed and design/programming updates should be made to help reduce loading time, so the site loads quickly for your users/customers.

Finally, gather feedback from independent third party website users. These users should have no affiliation to your company. You can find testers at websites like usertesting.com.

You may have many processes in place to reduce software quirks and errors, but it is difficult to test every possible scenario. Software giants such as Google and Microsoft encounter the same challenges as all websites: software is inherently quirky. Do your best to test your website through various stages to ensure 100% usability. However, be aware that there are likely going to be some quirks here and there, and that you need a company that will support their product, and get these quirks resolved in a timely manner.

Additionally, custom functionality usually encounters more quirks, as your team will be developing the features from scratch. Remember to be patient, and try to get time quotes and detailed specifications for all custom features before you begin them.

As a business owner, it is challenging to think of every possible customer-case scenario. When the website goes into live production, you may receive feedback from your customers that might be important for you to implement in your new site. Make sure to budget for extra hours after the website launched to make programming/design updates based upon your customers feedback!

via eCommerce Site Launching Checklist | Practical eCommerce.