Today, I want to share with you a list of actionable steps you need to take before deploying your websites. Read until the end for a special message!
Responsiveness Nowadays, making your website responsive is essential to web development. Make sure your website looks good on laptops, desktops, phones, and tablets. Test your website with every popular browser. It needs to be compatible with most newer versions of all browsers. You can never know what device and browser some of your users will use to access your website. There'll be at least one trying to run it on an old Galaxy S3 with an outdated version of the Samsung Browser. Responsiveness and Compatibility are essential.
Accessibility Web accessibility is about designing and developing websites and technologies that people with disabilities can use. In simple words, a website should be accessible to everyone, which means even a person with disabilities should understand, navigate, and interact with it. There are many factors you should implement when developing a site. Some of them are: add keyboard navigation, Using ARIA roles, using enough colour contrast between the text and background, add alt text to all images, and using descriptive names for links.
Usability measures how well a specific user can use a site to achieve a defined goal effectively and efficiently. Make sure your website is easy to use. A user should be able to find what he needs quickly and easily. You need to look at each element on your website just as a visitor would. The text should be easy to read on mobile devices and other standard devices, and you should make your navigation clear and easy to understand. Content should be the same on both versions of your website
Short loading time Website page load speed is one of the most important things you should care about. You should not make your users wait for a long time; the user experience of your website becomes terrible. Your website should load as quickly as possible, and also site speed has become one of SEO's top priorities nowadays.
SSL certificate SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. An SSL certificate enables you to use HTTPS for secure data transfer, and it will ensure your website is encrypted so hackers can't intercept any of your data. Not only will this put your visitors at ease, but it'll also boost your website's SEO since SSL is now part of Google's search algorithm.
Optimized Images No matter how optimized your website is, images will always be one of the slowest-loading elements on the page. So optimizing images on your website is essential. It's always better to avoid TIFF or BMP images and stick to JPEGs and PNGs. And also, you should avoid empty image src code lines. Before deploying your site, optimize your pictures across web pages; otherwise, it will affect your page loading time.
Use Fallbacks Make sure to use fallbacks. A "fallback" is nothing more than additional options to deliver to a browser if the browser cannot render a specific HTML tag, CSS property, or script. Fallbacks are most commonly utilized with HTML5 tags and CSS3 properties, both new and may not be fully supported in some browsers.
Double-check all links and forms Before deploying the website, always check all your links, buttons, forms, etc. Are they working correctly or not? It happens pretty often that the links that work when developing may not after deploying in production. And same goes for buttons and forms. Always check for broken links and documents.
404, Favicon 404 page is significant because a visitor may mistype or click on a bad link, so you don't want the visitor to see an ugly error warning. Ensure you've set up a custom 404 page on your website to prevent this.
Minify Files Minification is the process of minimizing code and markup in your web pages and script files. It's one of the main methods to reduce website load times and bandwidth usage. The primary goal is to remove redundant or unnecessary data such as spacing and comments.
Professional Domain If you want your website to look professional, buy a professional domain. Don't use domains like '.netlify.app', '.vercel.app', etc. Many beginners can't afford a professional domain, but a professional domain always looks better than a subdomain.
SEO SEO is one of the most important topics you should care about. SEO improves your site's rankings in search results. But also, the primary purpose of achieving high rankings is to attract more traffic & convert that traffic into customers.
Use a CMS CMS stands for Content Management System. If you use a CMS, it will be easy for you to change any content in a CMS rather than editing the code repeatedly. One more benefit of using a CMS is that if your website's content is created and edited by non-technical people, they need to have a good GUI interface to work with.
Bonus tips Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network). Put scripts at the bottom. Put stylesheets at the top. Avoid redirects. Use caching. Make sure your websites don’t have any significant vulnerabilities.
That's it for today; I hope you found these tips helpful!