What a marketing site needs before launch

A marketing site has one job: help the right person understand what you do and start a conversation. The launch list is shorter than most proposals make it, and more specific.

Pages with a purpose

Give each offer its own URL. A homepage can introduce the studio, but the service page is what you send to a prospect and what a search engine can index. Write the title and the first paragraph for that page, not for a slide.

Include a contact page that says what happens after someone writes. If you collect a name and email, link a plain privacy note that says what you store and why.

The form has to work on the server

Browser checks are a convenience. The server still has to require a real email, reject an empty message, and protect the form against cross-site posts. Tell the sender when a field needs a fix, next to that field.

What crawlers should see

Use a unique title and description on each page, a canonical URL, and a sitemap that lists only the pages you want indexed. The important sentences should be in the HTML. A 404 must return 404, not a soft page that pretends the URL exists.

Before you call it live

• Read it on a phone and at a narrow window.
• Tab through the menu and the form with a keyboard.
• Send a test message and confirm it arrived where a person will see it.
• Check that HTTPS is the only public version of the site.