Essential Checklists that every Web Developer must refer to!

Developing a fully functional website for your enterprise is a herculean task as the website development process is time-consuming and loaded with complexities. It involves various stages: creating the web design, website development, website project management, testing, deployment and maintenance post-deployment. Each stage needs to be executed skillfully to avoid any glitches in the operational system. Additionally, the project has to be delivered within the set timeline. Therefore, chances of lapses are likely; particularly if your team lacks experience or is in a hurry to meet deadlines.

To fulfill these challenging website development requirements, every web development team should maintain a checklist of the essential tasks, to avoid any misses. This blog enlists the key web development checklists that your team needs to refer to; for architecting a flawless web application or website. These checklists have been created by consolidating inputs from the doyens of the software sector and will help a Web App Development Company to make sure that crucial action items are not missed.

But, before we proceed, take a glance at what kind of checklists are required.

Checks for Web Development

Every web app development project must carry out the following validations during website development. Given below are the kinds of checklists that are essential.

Design, UX and SEO checks

Optimize your website for all kinds of devices such as mobiles, tablets, laptops and desktops.
Eliminate irrelevant images.
It is important to check whether the UX design has been executed as per the set standards.
Make sure your website doesn’t contain validation errors and broken links. Broken links are the links that show an error or the “page not found” message when clicked and as such adversely affect the User Experience as well as the website’s SEO score.
Include meta tags like title and description, as they improve the website’s ranking and boost the SEO score.

Readability checks

Cross-check the website content for any possible spelling or grammatical errors prior to the website’s live launch.
Ensure that your website content is unique and plagiarism-free.
You need to adjust the font style so that that your web page is easy to read and scan; as this aspect is a game-changer in the matter of user retention.

Functionality and Performance checks

Check the visual appearance and loading speed of your images. In case they appear blurred or are slow to load; resolve this problem by optimizing the image-size. Optimization of images boosts the performance and also improves the search engine ranking.
Examine the loading time of your website. If the loading is more than 4 sec, get the issue resolved, otherwise, it may have adverse effects on your viewership.
Check your website’s performance and rendering on trending browsers like Chrome, Safari, Mozilla, Internet Explorer, Opera, etc.
Always turn on the caching of your website. The reason is caching not only optimizes the speed of a webpage but also reduces the server-load by minimizing lengthy scripts like JavaScript and CSS. A cache plugin called ‘W3 Total Cache’ can be easily installed if you are using WordPress to develop the website.
Ensure that all the links of your web page are functional and it enables effortless navigation.

Security checks

Secured Socket Layer (SSL) : An SSL certificate is a must-have if your website collects sensitive user data such as personal details or banking/ credit card particulars.
An anti-malware Plugin : Employing anti-malware plugins helps to effectively resolve malware threats and hence protect a website from viruses as well as malware attacks.

Handy Checklist for Web Design

Here are some ready-made Web development checklists recommended for your team.

Checklists related to an app’s pre-launch and post-launch

The Essential Pre-launch Checklist for Your Website includes functionality, design elements, cross-browser testing, content editing, and SEO.
Website Launch Checklist by Glasgow developer provides tools for checking actions after they are completed, greys out items that are not applicable, and resets the checklist to make it ready for the next project. It includes editing content, testing links, navigation usability, validating HTML and CSS, GDPR compliance, minifying styles and scripts, infrastructure, communication, compatibility, analytics, performance, accessibility, etc.
The Essential Launch Checklist for Web Apps and Mobile Apps by Ben Cheng allows product managers to test the security, performance level, compatibility, and broken links in applications.

Checklists on front-end performance

A front-end Deployment Checklist by Fred Rocha provides guidance on validating the markup; as well as checking the performance, the console for JavaScript, etc.
The Front-end Checklist by David Dias is a useful digital interactive tool. One has to enter the project’s URL to get a full report on areas like JavaScript, HTML, CSS, head, images, web fonts, SEO, accessibility and performance. This check is an exhaustive one that classifies items based on low, medium or high priority requirements.
Front-end Performance Checklist 2020 by Vitaly Friedman guides on How to get ready on planning and metrics, how to set realistic goals, defining the environment and assets, build and delivery optimizations, monitoring and testing, etc.

Checklist Pertaining to Backend server and database security

Back-end Best Practices offers stack-agonistic guidance on the best available practices concerning different back-end architectures like app monitoring, security, data storage solutions, server environments, etc. It also offers a responsibility checklist for organizing the web design task list for the team and a release-checklist required during the website’s launch.
Database Testing Checklist provides checklist items regarding field validation, stored procedures, security, database integrity, constraints, transactions, etc.

Checklist on cross-browser testing

Cross-browser Testing Checklist Before Going Live offers testing related to element alignment, font rendering, API connections, etc.
Cross-browser Testing Checklist offers all items required for testing on various browsers and operating systems.

Final Verdict

Thus, every web developer as well as web development company must have comprehensive knowledge about these essential checklists for architecting a flawless and universally acceptable website. To know more on why opt for web app development, click here.

I hope this blog was helpful. Have you come across any roadblocks while developing web applications? Do share your experiences in the comments section below and let us know in case of further queries.