Ultimate Website Checklist 2023: All the Features of a Successful Website at One Glance [+ Free PDF]
Last updated: January 15, 2023
What makes a good website? What website features do you need so your prospects will find it useful? How to review a website to make sure it’s destined to drive sales and inquiries on autopilot?
This ultimate website checklist should help you critique and improve an existing site faster. Or to make sure you did everything right from the start when you launch a new website.
It’s a lot of info to take in. But you were the one asking for an “ultimate website checklist”, so no complaints! Yet, to comfortably review a website with this checklist, you can download its handy PDF version. Itt contains additional information and checkboxes you can cross to mark your progress.
Get Traffic to Your Website
The best product in the world is worth nothing if no one knows about it. The following paragraphs will show you the ways to get traffic to your website.
Organic search
Keyword optimization
☐ Target only one keyword per page
☐ Use words that are semantically linked to the keyword
☐ Use keyword in:
- URL
- Meta title
- Meta description:
- Between 50 and 300 characters
- Unique for all pieces of content
- Address customers’ problem
- Present your solution
- Highlight outcome
- Beginning of the post
- Throughout the text where it sounds naturally
- Subheadings
- Images:
- Image file names
- Image titles
- ALT tags of images
Local SEO
☐ Name / address / phone number:
- Consistent across the web
- In footer of your website
☐ Set up business listing on:
- Google My Business
- Bing Places
- Yelp
- Apple maps, etc.
☐ Create citations on:
☐ Use Google Category as a keyword for your homepage
☐ Use {keyword} + {city} on pages/posts
URLs
☐ As short as possible
☐ Use “-” not “_” between the words
Tip: If your url is “mywebsite.com/photoshop_tutorials” search engines see it as “mywebsite.com/photoshoptutorials”, and you lose your keywords in the url.
Enticing headline
☐ Clear benefit
☐ Solve a problem
☐ Ignite curiosity
Tip: An enticing headline increases the click-through rate (CTR, the number of times people click on a link vs the number of people who saw it), which is a search ranking factor.
Backlinks
☐ Guest posting
☐ Outreach
Tip: Together with quality content optimized for the keywords, quality backlinks are the second major ranking factor. Developing a link acquisition strategy that works is bloody difficult not easy, especially if you are a small businesses owner or a solopreneur, and depends on your particular situation. This honest and detailed article on modern link acquisition tactics that work should help you decide on a strategy that fits your business most.
SEO “don’t”s
☐ Duplicate content / meta titles / meta descriptions
☐ Optimizing more than one page for the same keyword
☐ Keyword stuffing
☐ Buying links
Social networks
Social Profiles
☐ “Follow me” buttons on the website
☐ Active profiles:
- Google+
- LinkedIn, etc.
You don’t have to be on every possible social network out there. These are just the most popular examples. And as dump-and-run strategy won’t grow you a loyal following, it’s better to select a couple of networks where you think your target audience spend time and focus your efforts on consistently posting relevant content and interacting with others.
☐ Profiles visually similar across all social networks:
- Profile image
- Cover image
- Name
- Handle
- Description:
- Make it clear and to the point
- Link to homepage / landing page
- Add call to action
- Integrate keywords
Maximize engagement
☐ Make your content easy for others to share:
- Prominent share buttons
- Default message not empty
- “Click to tweet” buttons within blog posts
☐ Featured image optimized for sharing:
- Attention-grabbing
- Suitable dimensions
- Readable text (if any)
- Branded
☐ Use twitter cards
☐ Use Facebook open graph
Tip: When you use Twitter cards and Facebook open graph, Twitter and Facebook will automatically display the featured image when your posts get shared on social networks. Posts that include images are more noticeable. For example, tweets with images double your chances of engagement. On Facebook, image posts get 179% more interaction than an average Facebook post.
Paid Traffic
☐ Google Ads
☐ Facebook Ads
☐ LinkedIn Ads
☐ Twitter Ads, etc.
The most popular platforms for PPC campaign among small businesses are Facebook ads and Google AdWords. Yet, they are very different. This article will help you decide which one will suit your business better: “Which one is better, Facebook Ads or Google AdWords?”.
Tip: Paying for traffic is not something you *must* do to make your website successful. But it’s a good idea to invest $100 to test a crucial landing page and optimize it for the highest conversion before promoting it.
Measure your efforts
☐ Set up Google Analytics
☐ Set up Google Search Console (former Webmaster Tools)
Step 1: Summary
Make a Great First Impression
You got people over to your site. Now, you have just a couple of seconds to make them stay. The points listed in the next paragraphs have you covered.
Flawless user experience
☐ Fast website loading speed:
- Use good website host
- Optimize images
- Reduce number of plugins
- Enable browser caching
- Enable compression (gzip)
- Minify resources
- Simplify website design:
- Reduce number of elements on a page
- Use CSS instead of images where possible
- Combine multiple style sheets in one
- Reduce number of scripts
- Put scripts at the bottom of the page
Tip: To get a general idea whether you need to optimize your site’s load speed (especially the images) check your website with Google PageSpeed Insights. For more detailed list of the issues with your load speed, check your website with GTMetrix.com.
☐ No broken links/error messages
☐ Design:
- Professional or appropriate for your purpose:
- Visually appealing
- Prototypical
- Mobile-friendly
- Responsive
- Add a favicon
☐ No interruptions:
- No autoplay of video / audio
- Reduce number of ads
- Use pop-ups wisely:
- Don’t use intrusive pop-ups on mobile
- Make sure you are not interrupting your visitors before they reach their goal
☐ Website features that contribute to the flawless user experience:
- Clear and prototypical navigation
- A site search feature
- A clear way to contact you
- Links to the most important pages repeated in the footer
Tip: Did you know that your visitors will form an opinion about your website (and business) within 0.05 seconds, and that it’s your web design that influences their first impression most? Check your website layouts against this website design checklist to make sure your web design isn’t killing your message (and reputation).
Content Presentation
☐ Everything’s easy to read:
- Unobtrusive background
- Appropriate font types and sizes
- High contrast between font and background
- Links visually stand out
- Post text is well-formatted and scannable:
- Headings
- Short paragraphs
- Text highlights (bold, italic, etc.)
- Lists / bullet points
- Visually prominent quotes
☐ Use visuals:
- Images
- Video
- Slide share
Tip: Don’t overdo it. Too many images, whole paragraphs of highlighted text and endless bullet point lists achieve the opposite and make your visitors leave. Not sure if you’re doing it right? Here are 9 painful content formatting mistakes to avoid if you want your website visitors to actually read your content.
Content Quality
☐ Correct grammar and spelling
☐ Grab attention from the start
☐ Deliver what you promised in your title
☐ Solve problems of your target audience
☐ Avoid jargon
☐ Show your personality
☐ Support your claims with evidence:
- Research
- Examples
- Expert quotes
- Other articles on the topic written by experts
Tip: Even if you are a nobody in your niche (for now) you can make your writing sound authoritative by borrowing the authority from others and supporting your claims with existing evidence.
Step 2: Summary
Get Them to Know, Like and Trust You
Great! You were able to impress your visitors. Now they want to find out more about you and your product. The following paragraphs show you how to reinforce that first impression and get your visitors to know, like and trust you.
Reinforce great first impression
Homepage
☐ Should answer these questions:
- Who are you?
- What do you do?
- For whom?
- What’s in it for them?
Tip: Your homepage can be the prettiest in the world. But if it fails to instantly tell people what it is that you do and how it helps them, they will leave faster than you can blink.
☐ Should include:
- Logo:
- Unique and original
- Stands out
- Displays company name clearly
- Positioned top-left
- Links to homepage
- Photo of you / your team
- Navigation
- Headline
- Call to action
- Introduction
- List of features / Benefits
- Subscription form
- Social proof:
- Testimonials
- Client logos
- Certifications
- Awards
- Statistics
Tip: Not all of these points have to be in your footer, of course. Just select the most relevant for you and your business. But whatever you do, don’t leave it empty. Make that precious space at the end of every page work for you.
About page
☐ Quick intro
☐ Your mission
☐ Show your personality:
- Likable
- Relatable
☐ Credibility enhancers:
- Awards
- Qualifications
- Work samples
☐ Call to action
Recommended reading: How to Write a Good About Us Page for a Small Business Website.
Engage your audience
☐ Allow comments
☐ Don’t leave comments unanswered
☐ Ask questions at the end of your posts
Encourage to discover more content
Blog
☐ Link in navigation menu
☐ Posts:
- “Related posts” section
- Internal links to other posts / pages:
- Use them where they add value
- Use keyword for post / page you are linking to in the link text
- Author’s box:
- Short bio
- Links to social profiles
Tip: Your Blog page is one of the most visited pages on your website. Go beyond a typical blogroll and offer your readers a better possibility to discover relevant content, for example, by telling them what you blog about or listing several post categories.
Email subscription
☐ Set up an email sequence
☐ Opt-in form:
- On every page
- Set the expectations on what you share via email and how often
- Highlight the benefits
- Minimize number of fields
☐ Email Newsletter:
- Regular
- Relevant
- Write enticing subject line
- Proper “reply-to” address
- Proper “from” name
- Focus on helping, not selling
- Check how it looks on mobile
- Before sending, check spam score
Tip: Use Mail-tester.com to check whether your email will reach your subscribers or will be automatically filtered out as SPAM. This free tool also shows you the exact issues with your email.
Navigation
☐ Descriptive
☐ Intuitive
☐ Clear:
- About
- Services
- Pricing
- Blog
- Books / Courses
- Contact
- Search bar
☐ Mouse pointer changes on clickable links
Step 3: Summary
Make a Sale
The moment you’ve been waiting for has come. Your visitors know, like and trust you. Now they won’t mind if you start marketing to them sending them your offer. The following paragraphs will show you how to make your offer irresistible and close the sale.
Service / Product page
☐ Text:
- Grab reader’s attention
- Get to the point quickly
- Answer frequently asked questions
- Address and eliminate possible objections
- Use short sentences whenever possible
- Avoid jargon
- Add social sharing buttons
- Unique value proposition:
- Expose reader’s need
- Demonstrate importance
- Tell what’s in for them
- Focus on benefits, not features
- State features clearly
- Justify conversion
☐ Visual presentation:
- What’s important is prominent
- Logically related elements also visually related
- Clearly defined page areas
- Clickable elements are obvious
- Minimize distractions
☐ Credibility enhancers:
- Awards
- Client logos
- Personal information protection
- Testimonials:
- Believable
- Using full names and images
- Reinforcing unique value proposition
- Using data behind the value service / product delivers
- Addresses fears and explains how they were eliminated
Tip: “This is great!” is not a great testimonial. Check out this article for some examples of truly great testimonials. Feeling uneasy asking your client for a testimonial? These testimonial request templates will increase your chances for a great testimonial (and take the awkwardness out of the process).
☐ Call to action:
- One per page
- Visually prominent
- Clear
- Compelling
Tip: If nobody is clicking on your otherwise perfect call-to-action button, try burying it further down the page. Your visitors might need more information before making a commitment.
Easy conversion process
☐ Minimize number of steps to reach the goal
☐ Prominent link to Contact / Services page
☐ Form inputs:
- Easy to use
- Ask only for the necessary information
☐ Prominent call to action
☐ Secure your site with HTTPS
Three main reasons to switch to HTTPS:
- According to research, over 80% of the users would abandon a purchase if a site isn’t using HTTPS.
- All main web browsers display prominent security warnings for the HTTP sites that scare off many website visitors.
- Sites with HTTPS are given preference in search rankings.
Make it easy to contact you
☐ Use contact form instead of email address
☐ Link to Contact page from navigation
☐ Link to Contact page from footer
☐ List a phone number
Step 4: Summary
