The Only Web Design Checklist You Will Ever Need
Last updated: 2022-08-14
Here is the definitive web design checklist for any web designer, freelancer, or agency embarking on a web design job. Check out these simple steps.
Now more than ever, a website is crucial to the success of any business. Therefore yours must stand out from the crowd. Of course, every website is unique in its own way, but what remains constant is how to design, develop, and launch it properly. A good web design checklist ensures you don’t miss out on crucial steps.
Teams can easily become overwhelmed because there are so many distinct phases to go through when developing and launching a website. Our web design checklist addresses important aspects of the procedure, including usability, standard compliance, content, accessibility, and more.
What is a Web Design Checklist?
A website design checklist is a list of things that help keep track of the website design process at each stage for web designers and web design firms. These checklists help them keep organised and on top of tasks like prototyping, testing, coding, programming, and client needs.
Why Do You Need a Website Design Checklist?
Using a web design checklist ensures that each project phase is completed promptly and without overlooking any details.
A website design checklist makes the design and development phase more efficient because there is a lot to remember during the web design process.
When the schedule is tight, and the web design process is finished quickly, the team may forget some details if they don't use a web design checklist.
10-Step Web Design Checklist
Our checklist is flexible, so customise it to meet the demands of your unique business and users. For example, you can go through the list in order and mark each item off as you go, or you can just apply the steps that apply to you.
Before creating the most useful form of a checklist that closely matches the type of website, you will design and go through the principles that will help you establish the type of website you require.
These steps will give any web designer a general idea of how your website should function, what objectives you should concentrate on, and what to include on your web design checklist.
1. Define the Objective
Before going into website design, you must make some preparations to ensure that all stakeholders are on the same page and no details are overlooked.
You can determine the overall strategy and course of action for your website design project by defining the goal and objective.
What You Need;
The domain name and niche
A clear overview of the site
Icons/ graphic elements for site
Imagery based on branding
Logo
Colours and font for your brand
2. Research
Before diving into the design of your website design, make sure you've done your research. Then, you may better understand your users and ensure that the website you're designing will meet their requirements.
What You Need;
Gather information for your website
Market analysis
Competitor analysis- Analyse other websites in your niche
3. Development
Once the research has been done and the goals have been set, it’s now time to start the development process.
Here, you should construct databases, check that the production environments are prepared, and ensure that the domain is set up in place.
If you already have a built website and need to migrate it, export the database from the testing/staging server and import it onto the production server.
What You Need;
Domain name registration
Web hosting
Install WordPress or any other platform
Coding
4. Design
The next thing on our web design checklist for designing a website is to begin the design phase. The website's design would be based on a variety of features, including brand components.
To design a visually beautiful and functioning website, prioritise navigation and branding components that contribute to a positive user experience (UX) and user interface (UI).
What You Need;
A WordPress theme
Site Layout
Compatibility of the design across different browsers and devices
Images, scripts, and CSS are optimized across all pages
Favicon renders properly
HTML/CSS is validated properly
Paragraph styles, headers, lists, quotes.
5. Technical/ Functionality
Making sure your site functions smoothly requires a lot of technical work. However, the checklist below will help you create a high-performing website, prevent technical problems, and give your users a flawless experience.
What to Check;
Required plugins
Loading speed
404 redirects
Third-Party integrations
Submission forms, autoresponders, and feedback work well
Storage and email notifications
Social media links
Header logo links to the homepage
Security issues and malware
6. Content
The value of content on websites has never been greater. A potential customer visits the website looking for one and only one answer: 'How can you solve their problem?'
Quality content enables you to communicate important information, strengthen your brand identity, provide a positive first impression, and inspire users to become paying customers.
Provide your content team with a list of SEO or targeted keywords to ensure all content is created with your ideal customer in mind. While creating the content, the keywords should be used sparingly.
What You Need;
Formatted paragraphs, headings, lists, and headers
Accurate company contacts and social media pages
Proper credits or rights to images, paragraphs, and videos
Images, audios, and videos should load properly across all devices
Downloadable content works properly
Brand copy
Call to action
Correct keyword density
Proper punctuation, spelling, grammar, and writing style
7. Compliance
To earn visitors' trust and prevent complaints or even fines, be sure your website complies with local laws.
What You Need;
Information to let the users know if you use cookies.
The website should comply with images, fonts, and code usage rights.
Terms and policies should be visible.
Ensure the website is PCI compliant if you process and store any credit card information.
Access for users with disabilities.
Site Disclosure
8. Marketing/ SEO
The majority of your marketing approach will be implemented once your website goes live. But you may start on the right foot if you take a few important marketing actions during the design process.
What You Need;
All pages should have unique H1 titles and SEO titles with proper keywords.
Unique meta descriptions for all pages
Correct URLs
A dynamic XML sitemap
Have the metadata in the RSS feed
Submission of a dynamic XTL sitemap to search engines
Have a nofollow tag for applicable links
Place 301 redirects for old URLs
Image alt tags
Internal and external links which open in the new tab
9. Analytics/ Tracking
Tracking your website performance is one of the most crucial aspects of ranking better on search engines. With the analysis, you get to identify what is working and what’s not working.
What You Need;
Working tracking codes
Goals and funnels in your analytics software
Sync Google AdWords and Google Analytics accounts
A/B testing
Submit your website to Google Search Console
10. Backup and Security
It's essential to have an automated backup tool to ensure you don’t lose your work along the way.
What You Need;
Ensure passwords and other credentials are in a secure database
Monitoring scripts installation
Create backup copies of the website regularly
Conclusion
The secret to business success is creating a remarkable website that could appeal to the masses. A website design checklist will make sure all the details are covered, and everything functions as it should.
You must make sure that the user experience is not compromised in any way. Despite the fact that customers have access to a variety of browsers, your website's design should be compatible with most, if not all, of them.
