There are a lot of different components involved in the launch of a new website–especially if that site is for a new company! Like any other project, most of these components must be completed and secure before the project can be revealed to the public for its use. You probably already know the basics of a website launch: make sure you’ve got a good design and enough content to keep your site updated for a while. But what about everything else? Here are the other important details that must be in place before you officially launch your site.
Security
Obviously, you will want to make sure your site’s hosting provider has top notch security on its servers. That much is a given. Be wary of any hosting provider that makes you secure your site via a third party. It is also imperative that you make sure your own servers are secure as well. As the experts at Firewall Technical point out, “Servers are often the core of a business computer network. A server acts not only as a space for business documents, but it can also control how documents are retrieved. In addition, servers protect the entire network. For this reason, it is critical that your server is operating smoothly.”
Make sure you have proper security measures in place on your end of the server connection. In addition to the servers themselves, you’ll want to properly secure every machine that is used to work on the site itself. This way you can keep hijackers and other nefarious types from manipulating your company’s site through your own machines.
Privacy
Most people think that computer and device security is all they need to do if they want to protect their privacy. The truth is that this is merely one line of defense. When you are just starting out and building your business, you will need to take steps to protect your professional as well as your personal information from trolls and other hackers who might try to take advantage of you.
For example, did you know that any Mac or Linux user can access your website’s registration information directly from their own computers? It’s true! Make sure that you opt-in to private domain and hosting registration. This way your competitors will have a much harder time tracking you down to harass you. This is especially important for women. Unfortunately, female business owners, CEOs, and site masters are more likely to experience extreme harassment than their male counterparts.
Exploits
Recently Candace Owens, the founder of Social Autopsy and Degree 180 found herself in some boiling hot water after false claims of her site’s testing phases. She insisted that the entries used to set up Social Autopsy’s database were fake; that there were no real people listed on her servers. It took about five minutes for people to find an exploit in her code that allowed them to prove this claim to be false.
The lesson here–in addition to being honest about your trial phases and site setup–is to make sure that your site’s code isn’t full of holes that people can use to manipulate your system. Have a site developer go through your code looking for exploitable problems and entry points so that you can have them fixed before the site is launched.
Funnels Are Important
You spent days researching shopping carts, payment processors, vendors, etc. It is vital that you make sure that all of those systems can communicate properly with your site before you allow web traffic to access it. Take some time to make sure, for example, that a payment doesn’t bounce back to the site before the processor can process it. Make sure that once an order has been placed, it is actually sent to and received by the vendor. Run many tests on these processes to ensure they are working perfectly before you launch.
It is also important that you run these tests on all of the major operating systems and through all of the major browsers that your site visitors will be using. What works on a Windows machine might not work nearly as well on a Linux machine and vice versa? The Safari browser might be glitchy but Opera browsers will work just fine. These are bugs that need to be killed before you launch.
Obviously a site’s design and content are incredibly important. Nobody is going to argue with that. At the same time, however, even the most beautifully designed and content filled sites won’t do you any good if all they do is let hackers into your system while keeping your audience out. Take care of the details we’ve talked about here to make sure that doesn’t happen to you!
