Is my site working?

If I had a dollar for everytime I was asked How do I know if the website is working, I could retire.

I guess I have to interpret the question in 2 ways. The first, is the actual literal question, is my site up so people can see it. And my answer is almost always as stupid.

Can you see your website? Obviously if you can see it, then other people can also. Pretty straight forward.

The next interpetation is that they wonder what elements of the site need inprovement and if the programing is working properly. Are the search engines seeing it? Cany people buy? and so on. Which is a bit more complex than can I see it?

I am always amazed at how many people have never tested the shopping cart. And when I look at it, it was never configured to take payments or it was set up to collect credit cards on a test account or non existant merchnat account.

So when were you going to test it? And if you don't know how to use it, how can you support your customers?

Too often, people make websites, they have no idea what they are doing and they never even check the pages to see if they are working.

It is critical that you check your website on every browser, every operating system and computer that you can. Websites work differently on aol, ie, netscape and mozila. They function differently on windows 98 than they do on winows xp or vista. If the computer has an other software installed, and most do, then it can affect the display of the website and how the site is viewed.

Of course not everyone is a professional webmaster with a mac, windows and linux computer on a kvm switch and ready to validate websites. But you can certainly check the website on multiple browsers on your own computer.

If you are on a high speed or broadband connection you should consider that a page will load up to 30 times slower on a dialup connection. So if your page takes 10 seconds on broadband it will take 30 seconds to several minutes on a much slower modem.

If wont affect the ability of the site to operate, but if it takes too long, customers will leave before they can buy anything.

The next key to a website is simplicity. If the site is overly complicated it wont produce sales. If customers can't easily buy, then the site is useless.

I always recomend that people get feedback from their customers. How do they like the site, was it easy to use, did they find everything they want?

If you don't have customers, it is likely not just the website that is a problem. But if you have feedback then you at least know, the shopping cart doesn't work on AOL or the system wont take a certain credit card.

The first point of feedback is yourself. Then have a friend and family member check the website and give you their input. You don't have to do what they say, but it will give you an idea of how the site is being perceived by users.

Ultimately, the final factor in weather a website is working is if you are making money with it. Even if people tell you your website sucks (we get that all the time), if it is making money then it is working.