Like most of us, when you have completed your website design after spending hours (and sometimes days for some), you just want to publish it and make it available for the whole world to see. Of course you should be proud of your design. However, you should make sure that your website visitors get a good experience and overall impression.
Featured Image
The first thing you want to do when your website is live is to share it on your favorite social media platforms. However, if you have not uploaded an appropriate featured image, WordPress will use a default image from your media gallery and this might not reflect the true nature and quality of your website.
Always make sure that you upload a featured image. You can do so in the WordPress editor in the right column under the document tab.
Scroll down to the featured image and insert the image you would like to see when sharing.
You can also use a plugin such as Yoast SEO. With Yoast SEO installed, just scroll down in your editor and select the social tab. The same principle applies >> Upload an image.
And yet another way is to insert the image in the page settings in Elementor Pro page builder. Click on the setting icon in the bottom left.
Under General settings, click on the + icon and follow the prompts to select and upload your image.
Favicon
All WordPress websites have the same Favicon and you want to give your website visitors a unique experience. When viewing your website, you can click on “customize” at the top left.
You can also access this section from your WordPress dashboard under appearance>Customize.
Next, click on Site Identity and insert your site icon. This is the icon that will display at the top of browser tabs and make your website look branded, professional and stand out.
Links
You have a lot of links on a website. Some anchor links, some site URLs, maybe a few external links, lightboxes, etc. You need to make sure that all your links work perfectly before launching your website. There are no different ways to do this. Check them one by one. A broken link will negatively affect your website visitors’ trust in your content.
Sitemap
You launched a website but you cannot see it on Google? Go to google and then type site:www.yourwebsitename.com. The results will show you whether Google has indexed your website. If this is not the case, head over to Google Search Console and verify your website by inserting the appropriate meta tag to your header(tip: use a plugin named Headers and Footers).
When you have verified your website, Head over to your Yoast SEO, scroll down to Sitemap under the “features” section and click on the “?”. You will get a link to your sitemap.
Copy the link from your browser’s address bar and paste it in your search console. Google might take a couple of days to crawl your sitemap.
Responsiveness of the website design
Most traffic comes from mobile devices and Google also favors responsive websites. Often, people forget to check the mobile version of their website. They get busy creating from their desktop or laptop browser and the mobile version is not optimized.
I use Elementor Pro to design my websites and If you also do (highly recommended) you can click on the little screen icon at the bottom left of the editor and choose a different breakpoint to edit.
Optimisation
Make sure your website images are optimized appropriately. This will greatly affect the loading time and thus the user experience and also the bounce rate of your website.
Consistency in your website design
Go through your website design and make sure you are consistent with regards to the fonts used, the colors applied, the spacing between your different elements, your buttons and also your animations.
A consistent page looks neat, professional and keeps the visitor focused on the content towards which you are trying to send them. Otherwise, they get confused and spend more time trying to understand the structure, the flow of the website and they will eventually leave. Your conversion rate depends largely on your ability to display your content in a consistent manner. You can read more about how to structure your website here.
If you are struggling to get all of this done, get in touch and chat with our website design team about launching a stunning website for you.
