When we’re approaching the launch of a website, it’s easy to forget to double-check a few things. Checking these things, however, can prevent a lot of headaches after launch.
- Make sure that you have actually gotten the DNS from the customer
– it’s very easy to forget about some of the login sheet information after the initial onboarding call, but at the very least the DNS Registrar information is required for launching.
– Typical registrars are GoDaddy, BlueHost, HostGator, and Site Ground but there are many others such as SSO (SecureServer.Net)
– Make sure to remind the customer every time you email them with updates on the project’s progress
– Once you have it, be sure to put it in the appropriately labeled Zoho task so Dev will be able to find it easily during the launching process. - Always test the DNS login the customer gives you the moment you get it.
– One of the most annoying things (both for you and the customer) is to have all the go-ahead to launch, try to, then have to go back to the customer and ask for updated information.
– Also: if Ricardo tells you that it does not work and you’ve tested it before, test it again and if it works let him know that it does work and send him the information again. Logins are finicky and if you miss any little thing it won’t work and Ricardo’s busy so sometimes he goes too fast. - If you are launching a site that we made instead of migrating content from an old site, make sure to check the domain
– Sometimes, if the customer is trying to give their brand a new name or face, you have the opportunity to make sure that the domain name is good for SEO and that there aren’t businesses nearby with the name or problematically similar name.
– example: the-villageinn.com | this is not a good url due to the dash being in a not easy to remember spot and the fact that “the” is a throw-away in terms of SEO. In this case, a quick google search revealed that there is also another business within 2 hours of the customer that has this domain which uses thevillageinn.com, which will certainly pull organic traffic away to the competitor 2 hours away instead of our customer.
– remember these three things when you’re evaluating domains:
1) Easy-to-remember
2) Short and/or Easy-to-Type
3) Consistent (either with other connected brands or with formatting where all words are separated or none are) - Be sure you know where their email is hosted. Ask the customer directly.
– The easiest way to ask the customer is to ask them where they go to log into that email. If it is hosted with the previous website creation company you will need to either have the customer set up a new email with Gmail or MS 360 or to let dev know that we will need to host their email. We highly discourage this, as any email we host will go down if the website does if we host their email and they will not have access to their emails before the DNS transfer unless they use Outlook and export their previous information, then import it after our transfer has happened.