Launch Checklist for Apps & Sites
This checklist can be used for all your projects inside or outside Designware.
Whether you're working on your first project, or your 100th, even the most detail-oriented of us risk missing something—a small typo, a broken link, a stretched image, and plenty more pitfalls.
Designware staff have collectively worked on hundreds of apps and websites in our careers. Our designers, developers, and marketers put together this comprehensive list to help you save time, avoid surprises, and boost discoverability—to achieve that flawless first impression.
Launch Checklist
For more details on each item, follow the anchor links to see their descriptions further down.
Content
User Testing
Analytics & Tracking
Website SEO (websites only)
App Publishing (apps only)
Technical & Legal
Quality Assurance
Marketing
Content
Review the copy
These are the most critical words of your project. If it's a website, your header should tell visitors exactly what you do and explain your main value proposition in the most condensed, powerful way possible. Your sub-header should explain the "how" to boost your visitors' trust in your ability to serve them.
Display Social Proof
If you’re trying to get users to convert, know that they are more likely to trust you when others have already vetted. Social proof can be clients' logos, testimonials, case studies, sales milestones, and more. Try to get creative with them; people are growing blind to simple rows of logos.
Check Your Conversion Path
Look at your primary pages and ask yourself:
Is it clear what visitors need to do to convert, purchase, join, or complete other actions?
Can visitors quickly spot the calls-to-action (CTAs)?
Are CTAs visible enough?
Is it clear what your visitors will gain from clicking on it?
Proofread Every Single Page
Start by doing a first review yourself, and lean on free cleanup tools like Grammarly. Then ask someone (preferably skilled in grammar and flow) who hasn’t worked on your project at all to proofread each page. You might also consider hiring a professional proofreader on Fiverr. You can have a typical website or app checked for $30 to $75.
Apply UI Best Practices
We conducted market research and learned that the look and feel of an app is the primary reason why users download and retain it—over and above features and innovation. In an ultra competitive software market, flawless, intuitive UI/UX is now the rule, not the exception, and anything less will be graded as unprofessional or unable to scale.
Leverage common UI patterns like shared colours, type styles, and icons from the same library. Apply consistency to things like the sizes & gaps of elements, navigation & actions, and the appearance of images or videos. Users appreciate visual continuity, symmetry in layouts, and self-explanatory options.
Compress Your Assets
A user's storage space and bandwidth will impact the load time and experience of your interface. Reducing the size of your biggest data hogs—images and videos—is a critical step towards improving your installation or bounce rates.
You can leverage sites like Squoosh to compress images (we recommend using WEBP), and Media.io to compress your video or audio files before integrating them into your project.
User Testing
Put Your Project In Your Customers' Hands
Write out the main things you want users to do, and use services like Lookback to screen-record volunteers while they try to achieve those tasks. These recordings can be a goldmine of insight.
Usually, you only need five sessions to uncover main friction points. However, if there are no overlaps between your first five interviews, run more until a pattern emerges. Then fix it.
Keep Localization In Mind
Beyond language translation, you should also consider local customs, trends, cultures, and preferences. If you miss the mark here, your users may have a difficult time using or relating to your project.
Consider things like:
Local currency
Local vocabulary
Local imagery—can they relate to the people and places shown in your media?
Time & date preferences
Legal guidelines
Run Customers Interviews
If you don’t have the time or budget for usability testing, book a 30 minute call with three to five of your clients or prospects. Don’t be shy. Reach out, send LinkedIn connections, or shake down your network. Make it clear that you’re not trying to sell anything and that you just want to pick their brain. People like sharing their opinions and learning about new things.
Ask Your Colleagues And Friends
Your colleagues may see things you missed based on their fields of expertise. Your friends might be more direct about something weird going on with your design and usability. Send them the link to your project preview, prepare concrete questions, specifically ask for constructive criticism, and collect the feedback.
Analytics & Tracking
Set Up Your Analytics
You need to understand who’s visiting your site or app, where they're coming from, and how they're interacting with your content. Google Analytics is the most popular and comprehensive analytics tool, and it's also free.
To set it up: create your account, get your tracking code, and add it into the <head> section on every page of your site.
Filter Your Internal IPs
Get a more accurate view of your data by asking Google to filter out traffic from you and your team, since these visitors will skew your analytics. If your team works remotely, that means having everyone send you their IP addresses.
They can find it by typing "what is my IP" into Google. From there, add the list of IPs you want to filter out of Google Analytics by following these instructions.
Add Your Retargeting Pixels (website only)
If you're planning to advertise on platforms like Facebook, Google, or LinkedIn, retargeting pixels are a must, as they allow you to target people who've already shown an interest in your website.
Because these people are way more likely to click on your ads and convert, retargeting is a powerful ROAS booster. So go to your marketing platforms of choice, get your account pixel, and add it to your website code (following each platforms' instructions).
Set Up A Heat Map
Another great way to understand how visitors interact with your website or app, especially a new one, is to use a heat map. Heat maps let you visualize where people are clicking, scrolling, and leaving. Hotjar offers a great free plan that can help you get started with this kind of analytics tool.
Website SEO (websites only)
Add Titles & Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are page descriptions that appear in search results. Though they’re not a ranking factor, they do impact your click-through rate, which then affects your ranking.
Write a unique title and meta description for each page. Descriptions should be less than 160 characters (Google cuts at 120 characters on mobile).
Titles and descriptions should include your keywords in order to get highlighted by Google.
Describe what the page is about and include your value proposition when relevant. Try to have a call to action and avoid alphanumeric characters.
Make Your URLs SEO Friendly
Help visitors and search engines understand what your page is about by keeping URLs short and intelligible. Make sure to include your keywords (one or two maximum). Send your sitemap to Google and Bing.
Name Each Image And Add Alt Text
This will help improve both your SEO and accessibility. Use relevant keywords to help users understand what they should see when images are not loading and let Google know what you're showing on the page. Google will then surface your visuals in search results. Keep your alt text descriptive and under 125 characters.
Set Up Your Redirects
If you are redesigning a website, you need to redirect your old URLs to your new URL. You want to keep your link equity while avoiding "404 page not found" situations. These are frustrating for your users, and Google will penalize you for it. Export your old website sitemap and set up a domain-wide 301 redirect. A domain-wide redirect will work for pages that follow the same URL structure, like www.oldsite.com/product → www.newsite.com/product. But you need an individual redirect when going from www.oldsite.com/product to www.newsite.com/features. Find more info on how to set up your redirect in this ahref detailed blog post.
App Publishing (apps only)
If You're NOT Using Designware
iOS & MacOS
Create an Apple Developer Account, which has an annual fee of $99 (or $299 for enterprise).
Review the App Store Review Guidelines. Apple has strict rules about apps that can be published on the app store. Ignoring these rules could lead to a rejected submission and cause delays along your launch timeline. Warning: these rules change regularly. If you think you’re familiar with them but haven’t checked them in a while, we strongly suggest a quick refresher.
Be thorough when filling out your app information and metadata. Consider all App Store ranking factors.
Craft detailed explanations of non-obvious features in the App Review notes to accelerate the approval process. Include help documentation, if available.
Submit your app for review. 50% of apps on the App Store get reviewed within 24 hours, and 90% in 48 hours, which will feel like 6 years. Consider keeping your beverage fridge stocked.
Android
Review the Developer Program Policies thoroughly. If you haven’t checked them in a while, we strongly suggest a quick refresher.
Sign up for a developer account, which has a one-time $25 registration fee. Remember that it can take up to 48 hours for your account to be approved, so build this cushion into your timeline.
Build an Android App Bundle in Android Studio. This will help Google optimize your app for each device, and will become a mandatory step in Q3 of 2021.
Make sure your app’s UI complies with Google’s quality guidelines for each specific platform (mobile, tablet, TV, and auto).
Upload your App Bundle to the closed or open track and optimize your release using the pre-launch report that is automatically sent to you—this can take up to 7 business days.
Set up your app listing details, including product details, graphic assets, languages and translations, contact details, categorization, and privacy policy. Consider all App Store ranking factors.
Windows
If it’s your first time submitting a Microsoft 365 app, build some extra time into your plans for app approval, as first-time submissions tend to take a bit longer.
Review Microsoft 365 app general policies and pay close attention to policies related to your app’s integration and audience for things like Office 365, Teams, etc.
Confirm that your manifest is compliant by leveraging one of these Microsoft-recommended tools.
Update your Partner Center account settings to include the correct ID information if you are supporting Apple iOS or Android.
Provide testing information for third party services or SaaS offers. Include your test plans, testing accounts, and instructions in the Notes for certification box.
Include critical information links to avoid being rejected. Addresses for a support URL, a privacy policy URL, and an end user license agreement (EULA) URL are required. Make sure your app includes and is referenced in your company’s privacy policy; a Terms of Use is not considered a privacy policy.
Get your store listing ready by filling out your marketplace listing. Include any screenshots or videos you’d like to use to promote it.
If You ARE Using Designware
Designware lets you fly through the publication process and increases your chances of getting approved by app stores, by eliminating the risk of them finding bugs in your project.
Check out our publishing docs for instructions and step-by-step guidance:
Technical & Legal
Test Your Website Speed (websites only)
Loading times have a direct impact on bounce rates, especially on mobile. They also impact your Google ranking.
To benchmark your website, go to PageSpeed and let Google run a quick scan. It will tell you if your pages load fast enough on both mobile and desktop. It will also give you recommendations to optimize.
Set Up An SSL Certificate (websites only)
Setting up an SSL allows you to encrypt and protect your website data. In the absence of an SSL certificate, browsers will flag your website as "Insecure."
You can buy an SSL certificate from GoDaddy or similar companies. If you're not familiar with the process, we recommend asking a developer for help.
Enable A Cookie Pop-Up (websites only)
You know those annoying "accept cookies" windows that pop up every time you visit a new website? GDPR made them mandatory for websites that collect any personal information from visitors located in the EU. California has a similar law, CCPA, that makes it compulsory for websites to disclose what data they collect and how they use it.
In both cases, you must offer a way for visitors to see and delete their personal information. Visit CookiePro or another cookie management provider to create your pop-up. We also recommend that you use this checklist and seek trusted legal counsel.
T&C And Privacy Policies
A privacy policy is required if you're collecting any type of personal information from users. It's also something you need to advertise on most platforms (Google and Facebook to start with). A terms & conditions policy isn't always required, depending on your website, but it's good practice to offer one if you represent a business.
You can create policies on your own on TermsFeed.
Check Your Copyrights
Even if you worked with an external designer, it's your responsibility to make sure that you are not violating any copyrights. List all your marketing assets, and check that you own the rights for each of them.
Schedule Regular Backups
Protect yourself against malware, server crashes, and human errors. Schedule automated backups that will help you recover data in case of an accident. It's usually something you can set up within your hosting platform or with your website or app builder.
Run A Stress Test
If you're planning a big launch involving the press or a massive paid campaign, run a stress test to ensure your website or app can support the traffic. Go to Loader and sign up for a free account. It enables you to test for one minute with 1000 user requests. If you need a larger-scale test, sign up for a paying account (or look into similar services).
Quality Assurance
Check Your Videos
A simple but important test. Check that all your videos are playing correctly on all devices and browsers. Ensure that they play the way you want (autoplay? without audio? full screen?), at an acceptable time.
Test Out All Forms
You haven't done all this work to miss out on leads because your forms don't work.
For each form, check that:
• There are no unnecessary fields that could harm your conversion rate.
• The right fields are marked as required, with labels added for screenreader accessibility.
• There is a readable error message popping when you try to submit a form without completing all required fields.
• There is a confirmation/thank you message appearing when forms are successfully submitted.
• Confirmation emails & marketing automation flows are sent to the right people in your team.
Check Every Link
Make a list of all your pages. Open each of them one after the other and click on every single link. Make sure that there are no broken links, but also that the correct pages are opening. Don't forget to test your navigation bar and your footer.
Check Browser Compatibility (websites only)
Each browser renders code a little differently. You need to thoroughly test that your website displays correctly on at least the most common browsers, if not all browsers. Use a tool like Lambda to confirm browser compatibility and run automated tests.
Set Up A 404 Alert (websites only)
If you haven't yet, create a custom 404 page that will encourage visitors to stay on your website despite following a broken link. Ensure the page is on-brand and offers a simple way to find what they were initially looking for.
You can have a little fun with these pages and other error messages. Our colleague Steven wrote a hilarious and very informative article about them.
Run Proper App QA (apps only)
Depending on your budget and timeline, you might want to look into organizations like Testlio or Sofy - they take a bit of the heavy lifting out of QA testing.
If you’re on a budget or prefer to keep QA testing in-house, check out this outline of QA testing checkpoints before getting started.
Marketing
Add Social Media Previews (websites only)
When you share a link on Facebook, LinkedIn, or other social media, a preview is automatically generated. This preview is managed via an open graph tag.
Open graph tags can be customized per page, following these instructions from Ahref. You can use a default open graph tag on the pages that don't require a custom preview, like your contact page.
Add A Favicon (websites only)
Favicons are the icons that appear in a browser tab. Adding a favicon will only take a few minutes, make your website much more professional, and help your visitors manage multi-tab sessions. To do so: find your logo, convert it to .png and rename it favicon.png. Then add it to your public_html folder.
Create A Promotional Offer
Now that your website is ready to be shared, it's time to work on your launch strategy. One common marketing tactic is creating a launch offer that will encourage people to visit your site or app and boost word of mouth. If you're part of professional Facebook groups, Subreddits, or Slack channels, create specific coupons for each group to develop a sense of exclusivity.
Create A Content Backlog
The best way to keep the momentum going is to continue posting fresh content frequently and regularly after launch. Start engaging your audience by posting new articles or videos right after your launch. But chances are that you'll find yourself quite busy analyzing, optimizing, managing, and advertising.
Consider preparing enough content for the month following your launch, and get the ball rolling.
Monitor App Reviews (apps only)
After launch, be sure to keep a close eye on comments and reviews. Reply to your users and be ready to make adjustments if needed.
Go the extra mile by thanking users for their reviews—good or bad—to increase the likelihood that you become a trusted creator.
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