You just finish your website, and you are excited to see it "live". But first you should test if everything on your website works correct. Remember that the website is your corporate identity on Internet. Testing your website gives you a chance to fix errors before they destroy your business reputation.

Now, what you should check first? I would start from the basic.

Spell Check & Grammar Errors

Proof read your site ... no meter how careful content creator was, you will always find few misspelled words or grammar errors. If you don't, be sure that your customers will.

Check Links

Next thing is to check if all your links on all your pages works. You can do it manually if you want, but on larger sites, it can be teddy task. For large projects, you can use Xenu's Link checker. The good news is that it's free and better than most other link checking software.

Forms – E-Mail

We all want feedback from our website visitors, right? To ensure that you will get some, check if forms on your website work as expected. Make a habit to test forms on your website from time to time.

Web site visitors many times enter wrong input in form fields. If you use Java Script to validate form input, check your scripts in IE and Firefox at least. Not all scripts works in all browsers.

Page Titles - Meta Tags

Web developers use different software to create web pages. If your webmaster forget to add Meta tags on your website, in the title will write: Untitled Document.

How can anyone forget to add Meta tags, I am hearing you asking.

Well, search on Google for: Untitled Document and 35.000.000 results will be returned. For the search term Untitled Document 1, there is much less competition. Google return "only" 1.650.000. I guess that you will agree that your company name is better title than "Untitled Document".

Meta tags are useful (especially title and description) for both, your website visitors and for search engines. So do the check.

Screen Resolution

You are looking your website on your monitor, and it looks great, right? How it will looks on other monitors and other screen resolutions? You website should look acceptable and on 800 x 600 and great on 1024 x 768 and higher.

How your website look in different browsers?

It is easier than you think, so continue reading. One of the things that you should definitely test is how your website looks in different browsers. The reason is: Each browser can display Web pages slightly differently, and you want to make sure your pages look good in the most popular browsers.

I have only one browser installed, how I can do this, I hear you asking. Search on Google for "view your website in different browsers", and you will find different websites which allow you to preview your website in almost all known browsers. And yes. It's free.

Usability – Can your website visitors find what they are looking for?

Ask few people to visit your website. Your friends or relatives, doesn't mater. Ask them what they think about your website. Let me clarify. It is not important did they like the colors or the layout of the site. Important thing here is: Can visitors find what they are looking for on your website within few clicks?

And the most important: When they look at your home page can they understand what your company is about? How comfortable they feel your navigation, did they understand the terms that you use on your website? Can they reach your contact page?

Zoran Makrevski
http://web.goto.gr/company.html