button_okWeb design and development is such a long and complicated process you really need a checklist to build successful websites.  This page covers (in great detail) the process and steps involved.

Please understand this is an evolving post so let me know what I’ve left out.

Pre Production

Information Gathering

  • Interview the business owner to better understand their business, the products they sell, and the services they provide.
  • Gather client’s requirement, ideas, objects, and goals.
  • Obtain or create a high resolution company logo.
  • Establish or obtain company color scheme
  • Executive Team Names, Titles, 1 paragraph bios, and photos
  • Some more information to gather
  • Company Name
  • Company Slogan
  • Mission Statement
  • Year Established
  • Address, Phone Numbers

Production

  • Mockup Design in Photoshop (or your favorite graphics editor).
  • Slicing and HTML Layout

Post Production

Usability

  • 100% Easy to Read Texting Sizing and spacing
  • HTML/xHTML Validation
  • CSS Validation
  • No Javascript Test
  • No CSS Test
  • A-Grade Browser Testing
  • IE6 Browser Testing
  • Mobile Browser Testing

SEO

  • Clear Descriptive Page Titles
  • META Keywords and Description review
  • One H1 tag per page
  • Ensure the title and h1 tag for each page is the same or similar and describes/summarizes the contents of the page.
  • META Keywords and Description review
  • Proper img alt tags
  • Dashes rather than underscores in URI paths (i.e. /website-design/ )
  • robots.txt – Disallow any pages that may be conveyed spammy or duplicate content.
  • .htaccess

Preflight Check

Steps and checks before you tip off the search engines to your website’s existence.

Content Proofing

  • Link checking to insure no 404 pages or broken links
  • Proof Read and Spell Check Content

Search Engine Promotion

  • [WordPress Specific] Enable Search Engine Access in Settings | Privacy
  • Submit to Google Search
  • Submit to Yahoo Search
  • Submit to Ask.com

Local Business Promotion

  • Google Local Listing
  • Yahoo Local Listing
  • Free 411 Listing
  • YellowPages.com Listing