The Web Diner's Checklist for Web Sites

Before Launch Checklist - Help Avoid Last Minute Gotchas

Wait! Before you launch that web site, here are a few final steps to check:

1. Sit down with someone who isn't familiar with the web site you've worked on. Ask them to find:

A contact address
The purpose of the web site. If it's a company, what does the company do?

If your tester can't find out this information in a couple of minutes, it's time to take a good hard look at the design of the web site.

2. Check every single link once the web site is on the server, and correct any broken links.

3. Check to make sure there aren't any missing images.

4. Check to see how fast (or slow!) the site loads with a 14.4 modem.

Extra Credit

And here are some points for extra credit. We admit that we've occasionally missed some of these ourselves, but these steps do enhance a web site.

1. Have you included the HEIGHT and WIDTH tag in the <IMG SRC> tags? It will speed up loading text on a page, giving web site visitors something to look at while images load.

2. Have you included ALT tags wherever possible? ALT tags aren't just for text only browsers any more. Both the Windows AOL browser 3.0 and Internet Explorer will display the ALT tag for an image while an image loads and also when you hold the mouse over the image.

3. Have you included META tags for search engines? You can index your site for some search engines using the META tag.

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