Last week, I was working on a new client’s existing website and couldn’t get their mobile menu to show up. After some digging, I discovered that someone had added CSS to hide the mobile menu icon. Why? I have no clue. It makes zero sense. That said, this is something that, without a doubt, should’ve been caught during any QA process.

This highlights a crucial point: whether you’re updating or building a website, you absolutely need to run pre and post-launch checklists. 

What You Need to Know Highlights

• Use pre and post-launch checklists to catch issues before they become problems
• Check desktop, tablet, and mobile views during development
• Make sure your site is SEO-friendly and offers a positive user experience
• Think like a new user when designing navigation and layout

Mobile Responsive Is Priority Not Secondary

No one is trying to make more work for anyone. We’re honestly trying to help set you up for success. And the data backs us up. For example, mobile-optimized sites can have up to 40% higher conversions than non-optimized sites (show me the money!). Who wants to miss out on that?!

To see how your website looks, you don’t even have to download a mobile simulator (unless you want to). You can easily navigate back and forth between the different views in most website builders via the toggle options in the top menu bar.

Plus, while Google hasn’t explicitly stated it’s a direct ranking factor, they prioritize mobile-friendly sites and use mobile-first indexing. Which means that their crawlers use mobile bots to index your web pages—not desktop.

Some more stats to drive this home:

• Up to 74% of visitors are more likely to return to mobile-friendly sites
• 90% of mobile users are more likely to shop on sites with good mobile UX

What To Look For with A Responsive Design

A truly responsive design adapts to different screen sizes, from small phones to massive desktop monitors. Areas of website design you want to pay attention to include:

• Adaptable layouts
• Flexible images
• User-friendly navigation that expands/contracts
• Responsive content, pop-ups, and videos
• Mobile-friendly forms (consider field count for mobile vs. desktop)

No Argument—You Need SEO-Friendly Website Design

Whether we’re building custom websites or turnkey websites, SEO-friendly website development is non-negotiable. It needs to be user-friendly and search engine ready for all device types.

Otherwise, let’s be honest, you’re paying for the vehicle but the engine that makes it run isn’t included.

At Be The Page SEO, we only offer SEO-friendly design websites for this very reason. This means optimizing for things like:

• Desktop view
• Mobile view
• Tablet view
• Buttons and links
• Content
• Image optimization
• Navigation
• Internal linking structure

Benefits of Using a Website Launch Checklist

I’ve seen too many websites that aren’t mobile ready. It’s mind-boggling! But, that’s why we have checklists. Some people hate them, others love them, but at the end of the day they help:

1. Keep everyone aligned on progress
2. Make sure nothing is missed
3. Prevent embarrassing oversights
4. Keep projects on time

We have a pre and post-launch checklist that we use religiously. And guess what? It’s yours for free. We don’t believe in gatekeeping—our templates are your templates (just remember to make a copy first!).

Remember: mobile search dominates Google search in the US by 95%. If you don’t check (and double-check) your website development for mobile responsive design, you’re missing out on a lot of user traffic (and moolah) my friends.