Just a list of things that you can’t forget in your web site:
Legal stuff (for Spain):
- LSSI, Ley de Servicios de la Sociedad de la Información, only if you have benefits form your site
- LOPD, Ley orgánica de protección de datos, if you store data from you clients, customers, visitors…
- Privacy Policy, about cookies, links to 3rd parts, terms and conditions…
Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
- Title, description and keywords dynamically generated depending on the content.
- Friendly URLS (human readable URI)
- Title and alternative text for all the images!
- Robots.txt: say to the bots what they can/can’t see or how often they can do it.
- Sitemap.xml: Say to the bots what’s updated and when
User/Browser:
- About: I think it is important to know a bit more about the site or what they are reading…
- FAQ: I’m sure there’s always questions and you have the right answers, important to keep it updated
- Cookies: Check if the browser of the user able you to read them…
- JavaScript: Check that JavaScript is enabled or they could not enjoy your beautiful ajax…
- Screen resolution: Don’t do a site with fixed width of 1600px…almost no one have that, my preference is a variable width.
- Sitemap: Make easier to the users to browse your site with a proper sitemap
- Contact: Just a contact form, makes you more reliable in front of the user and really useful. really important.
- Search: Is always welcome an small form to make a search
- Favicon: Something really simple to do but would make lot easier to see your site in a tabbed browsing
- NO pop ups: That’s terrible! please no Java Script pop up! at least use some modal box or something more friendly…
- RSS: This is mandatory…make to your regular readers live easier!
Make money / ask for money:
- Paypal: I think nowadays is the best way to receive donations or to pay for something.
- Adsense: Use some adsense just if it’s not a professional site of course…you don’t want the people to leave your site without buying!
Statistics:
- Google analitycs: Really important to analyze your traffic!
- Site Up Time: also important to know if your site is down or not!
Finally:
- If our site it’s about downloads or videos, use external services such as megaupload daylimotion imageshack….
- It’s your site fast enough? is compatible with other browsers? many small details that are important
As you can see I don’t say anything about flash web sites, since you can do nothing of this almost xD
I’ve forgot something? Any ideas?