Website Check Up List
Every now and then it’s a great idea to give your website a check up. Not only does time provide better vision, cyber gnomes have been known to wreak trouble while the webmaster or webmistress is away.
I’ve found that when it comes to blogs, e-mails, or websites - a quick once over is necessary as you go along. After all, when our fingers are flying along, they’re liable to hit any random key thinking it’s the one we were aiming for.
However, that initial once-over sometimes isn’t enough. We need to make a habit of periodically looking over our websites and blogs with a magnifying glass - finding the things that could possibly be problematic and making certain that they aren’t. We should act like we’re a visitor coming to our website for the first time. Do we immediately know what the site or blog is about? Can we locate the navigation quickly? Is our e-mail prominent? Have we set a friendly, welcoming atmosphere?
A few other things we should look for are:
1. Do our outward links work? If we’ve set them to open in new windows, do they do so?
2. If we have affiliate buttons up, are they showing rather than x-ing out?
3. If we’ve linked to certain products, are they still available? Is it still on sale, as advertised? Seeing a link for a product that claims to be on sale, then arriving at the site to find that it no longer is - is a frustration we should save our visitors.
4. How does our site look on different browsers? FireFox and ie look incredibly different - and there doesn’t seem to be any way to make a website look exactly the same on both - BUT we should try very hard to make our site at least presentable for all visitors - irregardless of their browser. It takes a lot of work, but it shows that everyone is important to you, not just people who use the same browser that you do.
So, how long has it been, its it time for a check-up?
