Once you’ve made all the design decisions for your author website and the pages have been built, you may be eager to immediately hit “publish.” After all, you can’t wait for your readers to start visiting! But not so fast—you’re not quite finished. This is actually the prelaunch phase of creating a website. The experts at Web Design Relief know it can be too easy to overlook a typo, navigation error, broken link, or other mistake if you don’t give your website a thorough review in the prelaunch phase. Before launching your author website, be sure to ask yourself these 22 questions.

Questions To Ask Before Launching Your Author Website

If you rush to make your author website live, fans and visitors might discover embarrassing errors you’ve overlooked in your haste. Instead of dealing with these faux pas by making corrections or fixes after the website is already live, check, double-check, and triple-check the website in the prelaunch phase by asking these questions:

General Questions For Your Author Website

• Did you review EVERY page on the website?
• Is it comparable to other author websites?
• Are your social media accounts integrated?
• Has all of your text been proofread and is now typo-free?
• Is it easy to use and not complicated to navigate?
• Do you have enough original content?

Here are articles that offer more help with your overall author website:

15 Best Websites To Help Writers Succeed

5 Ways To Make Your Author Website More Searchable And Visible Online

10 Easy Ways To Drive More Traffic To Your Author Website

Free Author Website Worksheet: Every Question Writers Need To Ask

Design Questions For Your Author Website

• Does your design match your vision for your writer brand?
• Is the website’s style consistent from page to page?
• Do you have a call to action?
• Have all of the images been added?
• Are all images the highest quality possible?
• Are your fonts clear and legible?

Read these articles for more author website design inspiration:

Update: What’s Trending NOW In Author Website Design

Genre-Specific Author Website Design Ideas You’ll Want To Steal

8 Poets With The Most Inspiring, Beautiful Author Website Designs

Technical Questions For Your Author Website

• Do all of the fields in your menu bar work properly?
• Have you checked for broken links?
• Do all the permalinks match your page titles?
• Has your website design been backed up?
• Have you checked your site’s speed?
• Do you have spam protection?
• Is your website responsive: Does it work on different browsers and devices?
• Are all contact forms set to deliver messages and information to your email address?
• Have you stored your login information in a secure place?

Learn more about the technical aspects of author websites with these articles:

6 Skills You Need To Maintain Your Author Website

Why Authors Need Responsive Website Design

Your Author Website’s Administrator: Should It Be You?

To Launch Or Not To Launch…That Is The Question

If you’ve checked all the questions above and feel confident in the answers, then you’re ready to launch your author website! Congratulations! But if the prelaunch checklist above has made it clear you still have some work to do, be sure you make all the changes and corrections before your site goes live.

Handling the technical aspects of your author website might make your head spin, but rest assured you can always trust the experts at Web Design Relief to take care of the nuts and bolts of website design. Schedule a free consultation today to learn more.

Question: Which question do you think is most important when checking your website?