If you have a website for your business or organization, you may want to pay close attention to the following year-end lists. Like many other things, they are not complicated but nonetheless following these bullet points is very important to the continued success of your website and company.

Schedule about 1 to 2 hours to do the following
Print lists here>>

=1= Online list:

• Open Chrome in Incognito Mode so that you can get “clean” search results otherwise you may take a chance of having your search results influenced by your search history. Search for your company name. Example: ABC Company. At the very least, your website should be up in #1 position on page #1 for your company name. If it does not, contact your webmaster immediately. This is easy to remedy.
• Search for two keywords which are important to your business and see what your website’s ranking is. If you are not on page one, schedule a time to meet with your webmaster or marketer to establish a strategy to improve your online ranking in 2016.
• Search for your full name. Example: John Smith. Online reputation for your company or you as an individual is very important. If you find any negative reviews, again mark your calendar to address the situation. Do not ignore it!

=2= Website list:

• Click on every link on your website. Start with the top navigation bar and work your way to every page. Check internal links (those that go to other pages within your site) as well as external links (linking to other sites). The pages might have been renamed, moved or deleted. If you have hyperlinks to other sites, revisit the importance of these links and remove or keep accordingly.
• Test all of your forms. This includes your main contact form, your newsletter sign up, your quote request and any other forms you might offer on your website. Make sure the email is received by the right people in your team and that the sender is either receiving a confirmation message or better yet is redirected to a thank you page.
• Open your website on the following 4 major browsers: Firefox/Mozilla, Chrome, Safari and Edge (the replacement for Internet Explorer). Make sure there are not distortion or misalignment in any of these browsers. To be thorough you will need to test every page on each browser.
• View your website on two popular smartphones. We recommence checking on an iPhone (newest version) and an Android based phone.
• View your website on two popular tablets: iPad and Samsung for example. Note that online responsive design checks are not 100% accurate.
• Check the spelling of your copy writing. There are online spell checks but you can also copy and paste your content into a Word document which will highlight spelling errors. Of course this does not always fix grammar. In our company we make every new team member read our entire website to review the copy. This is a great way for them to become familiar with our services and find any copy writing errors. Make sure the copyrights year in the footer of the site reads 2016.
• Test all website specific functions. Examples: Social media shareability, signup function, purchasing a product, downloading a document, searching a page, etc.

=3= Digital list:

• Review your email signature and make sure this is inline with your company’s brand and direction for 2016. More on how to brand properly your email here >>
• Make sure you have a branding plan just like you should have a business plan. Have your staff (and yourself!) read it so that everybody in your team will promote your brand the right way each and every time they communicate with a client. The plan should include colors, font choices, “tone of speaking”, etc.

If you do not have the time to review these 3 checklists, you can hire experts to do it for you. We offer such services so do not hesitate to contact us for a quote.

Complimentary video for the do-it-yourself site owner below …