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Hey everybody Mike Linville of Black Dog Education here to answer your
questions on Web design and Web development with this week's installment of Office Hours.
Today's question comes in "how do I know when my site is ready to go live?" so you been
working with a designer you've gone through this whole process and created the content,
gone through the design all this other stuff you think that's ready to go and not quite
sure. It's like when do I know when it's ready? Well when I'm working with my clients I have
a three stage process really phase we focus on one specific area of the website of the
three areas to focus are form, which is basically how your website looks, function which is
how your website acts, and content which is really the messaging or what your website
says. So what I'll do is start at the home page and now we're looking at form. We wanna
look at design we wanna make sure that things like padding is consistent, we wanna make
sure the same fonts are being used, the same color, same headlines, spacing and everything
else like that. And when you have an eye on that it makes it really easy to bounce from
page to page to page really quickly so we can see how things line up and you shouldn't
see logos shifting around a little bit or things moving. It should be rock solid. If
your structure is everything is going to be right their, it's not going to be moving around
that means that you have a really good form and is ready to go. The next thing is I go
back to the homepage and will start test all the way through what you're looking at is
function. We're talking about things like opt-in boxes. Check it, put in your name and
e-mailed to see if you're getting the e-mails you should be getting. Make sure they are
coming through with the names pre-populated or however they're supposed to work. If you've
got sliders make sure those are working, make sure they're working on their single browser.
Whatever kind of interactivity or active things that are on your website test those to make
sure they are all working okay. And the last thing this is probably the hard part this
is where business owners kind of get hung up is on the content. Is your messaging clear?
When you're taking a look at the about page is it clear who you are and who you serve,
and what the bigger purpose it? Is that clear what your products or services are? A lot
of times when you're checking the content as a business owner this isn't the area for
you what you really want to try to do is you wanna do all the writing up front but then
you want to bring friends in bring employees in bring business partners in whatever the
case may be. Bring other folks in to read that information so that way they can get
a clear understanding because they're looking at it from a fresh perspective. Is it clear,
is it representative of you and your business okay? Once you get a check off all three of
those things form, function, and content let her rip, tell your designer to take it live
and happy hunting that. So that it thanks for hanging out with me I really appreciate
it, remember if you have a question you'd like to have answered in this kind of a format
come on over to our Facebook page and post your question their and we'll make sure that
we get to it ok. If you like this video make sure that you like it on Facebook and share
with all your friends. Again this is Mike Linville from Black Dog Education I want to
thank you for coming by and we'll see you next time.}