“Measure twice, cut once.”
– English proverb
Any online store is the link between its owner and his or her customers. When you launch a new store, it’s extremely important to make a good impression on visitors to your site. So be sure to test whether everything is ready for launch BEFORE opening your store to visitors. Once the design is ready and the content has been generated, go over a check list to be certain that everything functions properly, so that your clients don’t run into unpleasant surprises.
- Try opening your store in the more popular browsers used by your clients. If you don’t have the statistics, check the layout in Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer. Make sure your design looks the same in every browser.
- What to pay attention to when testing your site’s design and usability:
2.1 Page elements should look the same in all browsers.
2.2 All images should display correctly in all browsers.
2.3 There should be no “dead” links.
2.4 Except for links to the home page, no page should have any links to itself.
2.5 To ensure a user-friendly experience, each page of your store should have:
- · A link to the home page;
- · Graphic elements displaying your shopping cart contents and links to it;
- · Links to the checkout page;
- · Your company logo, which also functions as a link to your store’s homepage;
- · A search field for finding products in your catalog.
2.6 Check your site’s (X)HTML layout using online tools (such as http://validator.w3.org/).
2.7 Move all CSS styles and JS code to external files and connect them to your pages using < link > and < script > tags. This will speed up page loading, thanks to the smaller file and cache sizes of external CSS and JS files.
- Make sure you’re using a URL that a human can understand. This is for two reasons: A) it makes it easier for people to remember your web address, and B) some search engines look for key words in the address when ranking webpages.
- Go over the articles and product descriptions in your catalog one more time. The text should be geared for your human readers, not web crawlers.
- Make sure your “Contact Us” page can be reached from any page in one click.
- Make sure your site doesn’t have redundant content. Remember that modern search engines have a strong aversion to nonunique pages and filter them out.
- Make sure all your available payment modules and delivery methods are functioning properly.
- Make a test purchase. Be sure that the order has been processed properly and assigned the proper status.
- Make sure all user information specified in your customers’ profiles is displayed correctly.
- Ask friends to “take a stroll” through your site. They may notice things you’ve missed.
If you’ve checked each item on the list and you’re certain that your store is fully operational, you can go live with confidence.
