After a very short time I felt that I wasn't quite on the right track and reached for the map and my compass to see if I could work out what I was doing wrong. No compass. Interesting. Well, I thought, I'm not that far from the start so I can just turn around if needs be, and on I went without further ado. Everything was fine and I had soon reassured myself that I was going in the right direction and after a lovely hour or so I thought I'd stop for a snack. No snacks! 

Clearly, the lack of nuts half way round a pleasant amble in the Cheviots is not a life threatening issue (although my friends and family may disagree because a Hangry Emma is quite a scary being) but I was annoyed with myself because I NEVER forget to bring snacks, or a compass for that matter, and here I was staring despairingly into the void of a food-free backpack. I thought to myself, hmm, I should write myself a pre-walk checklist.

Which is a long way of saying that even when you have been doing something for ever you can still forget vital things and the same is true in spades when building or updating a website or starting an online ad campaign. I spent years managing online projects of varying sizes and complexity, and almost every time once the designer had completed a site to everyone's satisfaction, the team would say 'cool, can you put it live now?'. 'I'm afraid not', I'd repeat for the 9,000th time, 'I have 6/16/60 more things on my checklist that we need to do before we can even think of going online'. 

A friend of mine did this the other day (I'd worked with her for years, she should have known better!) sending me a message to say that she'd posted about the launch of her amazing new e-commerce site on Instagram, and was hoping to finish off the 'last bits' over the next 3 days. The last bits were the usual things that lounge at the bottom of a list even if you've written one e.g. Terms and Conditions and Privacy statements but in this case also included testing the site to check a customer could successfully buy an item! This friend is also a mother of 3 children under the age of 5 so it wasn't that surprising, but let's face it, she should have had a list.

As a result of this alarming week, I have decided to create some lists for you to download and use. One list won't ever fit all online projects, but it'll be a start. 

Check list 1 for a basic website build.

Watch this space!