
I create a Quality Assurance Checklist for each website I work on. If I design it I know what to go through, if someone else designs/develops the website then I will need to work with them to walk me through each part of the site to see how it will function and if its functioning correctly. Here is a good example of what I do for you.
Quality Assurance Checklist
Setup
- Download all build files if developed remotely (database and files) locally.
- Install bug reporting app, assign team, save client files and uninstall all testing apps when finished.
Human Review
- Check for broken links (Screaming Frog, Scrutiny) fix items, save report
- Compare JPGs of design
- Compare approved site architecture
- Test the design and open in all browsers
- Resize the browser (stop every 50px). See how it breaks.
- Review header, footer, sidebar and main content area of home page.
- Click on all links (including main menu buttons, drop down bars, and sidebars – if available)
- Review those pages from a human standpoint
- Check the 404 page, make sure it redirects to 404 and has a html sitemap.
- Repeat all test for Internet Explorer, Chrome, iPad and iPhone
- Make sure there are no numbers in any of the links found on your site (bad for SEO)
Forms
- Contact Forms – Send test email from contact form, confirm it is received at the appropriate email
- Check all contact forms as sometimes there are 2-3 versions of the form
Check Design in All Devices & Browsers
- Check using Pixel Perfect or Visual
- Home Page
- Sub-Pages
- Landing page
- Bio page
- Landing page for Group
- Area Page for Group
- Contact Us Page and Contact Form
- Blog
- Blog Post
- 404 Error Page with site map
- Favicon is loading
- No image watermarks found
- All image rights are purchased and saved
- Responsive websites should snap at 959
Content
- Run Sitebeam report for spelling
- Check for content/format errors
- Check main navigation against approved site architecture
- Home Page – does it match what was approved?
- About Us page – does it match what was approved?
- Area pages – does it match what was approved?
- Bios pages – does it match what was approved?
- Blog posts – does it match what was approved?
- Contact Us page – does it match what was approved?
- Check office addresses and phone numbers are present on website and html
- Check site against developer notes
- Check that all inbound and outbound links lead to proper page
- Search for “Lorem Ipsum” content
SEO
- Run Screaming Frog and resolve any errors
- Check title tags & meta descriptions are in compliance
- Make sure schema local business is set up
- Make sure all social media icons are linked to the correct pages
- Check images for alt tag modifications
- Redirect all old pages to new pages. Use an .htaccess file for WordPress redirects.
- Redirect non-www to www, your testing link to www and alternate domains, if applicable
- Ensure URLs are SEO friendly URLs (short, extension less, close to the URL)
- Custom 404 error page with site links / site map and URL errors redirect to a 404 page
- Check that the robots.txt file is present and make sure website allows indexing
- Make sure html site map is created
Installs & Codes
- Webmaster Tools (WMT): Login and install your sitemap.xml. If you are using WordPress, install Yoast and use sitemap_index.xml.
- Set WMT tools to send notifications to you@yoursite.com. Use “Submit to Index” to make sure Google re-indexes your site.
- Google Analytics: Insert your Google Analytics “UA” code on all pages you want tracked – if site is using a subdomain; make sure to grab that version of code.
- PPC or Social Campaign: Insert all tracking codes to your website. Adroll, Facebook, Retargeter, Google Conversion and Chat Boxes are samples of the needed codes. Verify all codes.
- Goal Tracking for SEO Clients: Create goal tracking in analytics for confirmation page.
- Sync Analytics and WMTs
Website Launch Checklist
- Download Locally
- Download the site to Local Server (backups, we love backups)
- Export the database to Local Server (backups, we love backups)
- Run SiteSucker on the current website to ensure we have a local static copy for future reference
- Import sub-directories as-is if they are present on the site (/pdfs/, /videos/, /articles/, etc.)
- Screaming Frog Report
- Pre-launch
- Post-launch
- Redirect audit
- Point DNS
- DNS/Nameserver switch on domain registrar
- If necessary, setup email and point MX records
- .htaccess
- Remove the testing links
- Add redirects
- Robots & Meta
- Check the domain.com/robots.txt file
- If WordPress, ensure Settings > Reading > Search Engine Visibility is unchecked
- Double check <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow”> is not on the site
- Contact Forms
- Is the site using sendmail script? Check <form action>.
- Is the site using SMTP setup through clients email?
- Ensure email data is saved
- Send test email to client, ask for a verification reply
- Google Analytics
- Use a client email for all Google products accounts
- Install Google Analytics UA – code before </head> tag
- Setup Goal Conversions
- Google Webmaster Tools
- Create sitemap.xml and submit to WMT
- Verify both the non-www and www have been added to WMT (set preferred domain to www)
- Fetch and render both desktop and mobile to Google and submit
- Test robots.txt and submit/verify to Google
- Check for crawl errors and fix
- Select Google Analytics Property to tie Google accounts together
- Other Resources/PageSpeed Insights, run test and resolve issues
- Manual Checks
- Make sure a full physical sitemap exists
- Check that vCards are complete and working
- Open up each website page (hold down CRTL)
- Check for 404 page
- Also check for photos, sidebars, footers, odd text, odd URLs
- Check each page of the site for broken pages (404) and quick visual scan
- WordPress
- Under Users – Create client user, apply email account from the client complete with email and user name and make them an admin
- Turn on caching
- Turn on backups
- SEO & PPC Check
- Check with SEO and PPC and make sure both are applied to site, as applicable
- For WordPress, install WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin
- Add/copy title tags and meta descriptions
- Xenu Scan
- Check for broken links
- Fix broken links
- Inform content of broken links to send to client, include link location and link heading
- Credentials
- Send all credentials to the client