Your Site Has Been Developed! What Now?

You've been sent your demo link and told to review. That's great! What exactly do you need to review, though?

Check browsers against design

Open your website browsers and view all pages to make sure they all display correctly per design

Check mobile devices

Around 50% of website visits these days are from a mobile device, so it's important to test the site on phone and tablet to make sure it displays correctly.

For WooCommerce stores

  • Test the shipping rules on the cart page by entering a variety of postcodes, and editing product quantities to affect weight. The exact testing varies depending on the rules you have setup - for example if all of Australia has a fixed rate, then only 1 test is required. If you have $100+ free shipping, than edit product quantities to make the total less than $100, and over $100 to see it working.
  • Test the payment gateway and make sure the money is received if it's in live mode
  • Check the order emails to make sure it has your logo in them, and if you want to add details like address, ABN

Check the admin

We provide an admin tutorial which is a great reference. Please watch it, and familiarise yourself with the admin and ideally add some content. Probably 50% of updates relate to unexpected content - the design had nice big photos but your actual photos are smaller and similar, so code tweaks are required.

Organise the changes

It's best to compile any changes and questions into one big list, rather than sending things through in small batches.

Other potential items to check

  • Is Google Analytics setup?
  • Has all content been finished?
  • Are the form notification emails setup?
  • Spell checking the content

Make sure to check everything!

We have a 3 month warranty on the websites produced, after this stage any changes will be considered a new task and billable. Proper reviewing will catch nearly all issues.

Keep in mind when the site is ready to go live, you should check email notifications are received, and place a test order if it's an e-commerce store. Things can vary between hosting providers so what is tested on dev isn't guaranteed to automatically work on live!