Launch Checklists
There are a lot of things I can do before launching a website, sending an email, or publishing a new product that will make the experience better for the consumers of those things. I can make the website or email load faster and work as best as possible. I can make the product launch a enjoyable experience. It's definitely a lot more work to do these things, but it is a challenge I enjoy.
For every type of project, here are things I do, in no particular order.
- Package and compress images so they are pretty and load quickly. I use Adobe Photoshop to save the images with the correct color profile to make sure the colors load correctly. I make the dimensions of the image only what is needed, making sure they aren't larger than they'll ever be displayed. I compress them with a tool like tinypng.com if I'm lazy, or PNGQuant and ImageOptim if I really want to get the best result. You could go further and use new image formats that make images even smaller, but I like the path of making the most supported type of asset as small as possible instead of making the potentially supported type of asset hopefully smaller.
- Check the spelling so I don't sound dumb.
- Read what I wrote out loud to ensure I don't have grammar issues or missing text.
- Have someone else review the content to see if anything is unclear.
- Click all the links to make sure they work.
Website specific things
- Make the website load as quickly as possible. I typically start by using google lighthouse to check the website's speed and optimized code. I also like to check the code coverage, which is a way to see if there are any parts of CSS or javascript that aren't used and can be removed. Minimizing files is helpful if your site has a long script file, but I try to avoid having large script files whenever possible, because I use as few external things as possible (fonts, javascript, images, etc.)
- Ensure the code is valid by using a W3C markup validator, W3C CSS validator, js validator, etc. Your code creation tool might do this for you already, but it is always good to use a second check for valid code.
Email specific things