Here is a list of top web design tasks that I sometimes forget when I design a new site.

Mobile Optimization

1. Create Mobile optimized version of your website.

There are plenty of tools to help you achieve this. Mobify is a popular way to design a mobile layout for your website

2. Create an iPhone bookmark icon

Learn More:
Give your website a custom iphone bookmark icon

RSS

3. Create RSS feed of your website and upload it to Feedburner

4. Display RSS Subscription button on your website.

5. Add RSS feed button to address bar

Add this (site specific) to the head section of your website -

<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”Site or RSS title” href=”link-to-feed” />

Other

6. Upload favicon and add this to head of your website

<link rel=”icon” type=”image/x-icon” href=”/favicon.ico” />

7. Use a Print style sheet

Learn More:
Give your website a custom print style sheet

8. Have site logo link to home page

Make sure it links to the page you want the search engines to index. (e.g. www.yoursite.com, not www.yoursite.com/index.html)

9. Make your site easy to share

Integrate social networking and sharing widgets

10. Check your website on different web browsers

11. Ensure no broken links – INTERNAL or EXTERNAL

12. Install Analytics

Google Analytics provides a popular and free analytics tool. Others include:

http://getclicky.com
http://kissmetrics.com
http://haveamint.com
http://www.statcounter.com
https://analytics.postrank.com

13. Add Privacy Policy, terms and conditions, Update Copyright year

SEO & Meta

14. Help search engines find and index your site

i. Meta description – accurately summarize the page contents
ii. Set up 301 redirect to http://yoursite.com from http://www.yoursite.com in .htaccess
iii. Set up useful 404 page 1) Don’t allow 404 pages to be indexed by search engines 2) Use similar design as seen in the rest of your site (inlcude all navigation links) in .htaccess
iv. Set up 301 redirects for misspelled or missing pages in .htaccess
v. Give all images appropriate alt text
vi. Create and upload robots.txt file
vii. No more than 70 characters in Title Tag
viii. No more than 155 characters in Meta Description
ix. No URLS more than 4 levels deep
x. Create and upload sitemap – http://www.xml-sitemaps.com
xi. Outgoing link Anchor Text – Should be on topic, descriptive.

I’m sure I missed some, so please help me make this post more useful by adding yours in the comments section.