Mastering the Launch of Your New Website

Are you a small business owner looking to launch a new website? It can be daunting, but don’t worry – there are plenty of strategies and options that you can explore. Don’t know where to start? Well, you’re in the right place!

Your new site is part of your brand, and you want it to be a great representation of it. We understand that – but a lot goes into it whether you take on the task yourself or hire professionals. And trust us; there’s a big difference. Let’s walk down the right path to a new business website step-by-step.

Table of Contents:

1. Mastering the Launch of Your New Website
2. Free Does Not = Professional
3. Get to Researching
   1. Define Your Goals
   2. ID Your Target Audience… & Competitors
   3. What’s Your Name?
4. Making a Usable Website
5. Testing Before You Launch
6. Getting Analytical
7. Take Time to Refine
8. Lift Can Build Up Your Website

Free Does Not Equal Professional

It’s totally understandable that you’re working on budget. Why not just go for a free website?

But let’s be real; a cheap or rushed web design – more times than not – means poor quality.

As long as you have a website that (somewhat) does the job, you’re good to go. Right? Wrong. Choosing the right design agency is an investment that pays off in the long run. Don’t settle for whatever you finagle out of a free website builder. A professional web builder optimizes your site for user experience, naturally leading visitors down your sales funnel. Basically, we’re telling you not to be afraid of agency pricing. At the end of the day, you get what you pay for (and your customers can tell).

A professional designer also knows about basic search engine optimization practices. If you don’t know why that’s important, take a look here.

Get to Researching

Ah, the thrilling world of project planning. Who doesn’t love spending hours figuring out schedules, layouts, and templates? In all seriousness, establishing objectives and creating project plans is a crucial step in achieving your online presence and meeting your business needs — and it all directly feeds into your new website.

Define Your Goals

It’s not enough just to have a website. How often should you post content like high-quality blogs? How can people easily find your website? Social media is a great way, which pairs with having solid content optimized for SEO. Content makes you known as an industry expert that people want to cite as a resource.

ID Your Target Audience… & Competitors

Don’t even think about building a website until you know who you’re talking to. Once you nail down your target audience, you can start shaping your website design and content strategy.

It’s helpful to know what’s working for your competitors, too. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel – look at elements that work for them and put your own spin on them. But don’t copy them — you’re better than that.

What’s Your Name?

Your custom domain name needs to be easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and relate to your business. Put a little more thought into it than just finding the first thing available on GoDaddy.

Making a Usable Website

Of course, you want a pretty or good-looking website. After all, who wants to look at a hideous website with poor functionality and font choices? Certainly not your customers – they deserve quality website design and an engaging user experience. After all, you’re trying to convince them to make a purchase, are you not?

And let’s not forget about adding some snazzy animations here and there to give your website some extra pizzazz. Anything that keeps visitors on the site and not bouncing off as soon as they hit. Sure stock photos are easy, but are they intriguing enough for potential customers?

There’s a lot that goes into making your site user-friendly, including hamburger menus, drag-and-drop features, and more navigational features. Ease of use must be front of mind when building out your website template.

Think of all of these elements as layers. A website should have dimension to it, not to mention all the backend stuff:

• SSL Certificate
• Plugins
• CSS (cascading style sheets)
• Web hosting
• HTML code

Testing Before You Launch

Not to scare you, but there’s a lot of work that goes into testing, optimizing, and troubleshooting your website before it goes live. Integrations, code compatibility, and HTML optimization are just the tip of the iceberg. (Don’t worry – if you’re going this alone, WordPress isn’t too difficult.) But with the right tools and resources, you can ensure your website is in tip-top shape before launch day.

Your site will be tested on all sorts of devices to make sure it actually works. This is also the time to proofread all of your content, and we mean every single word.

Getting Analytical

Congratulations! Your new website is up and running. Is it doing what you actually want (and need) it to do?

With the help of a content management system (CMS), we keep tabs on which pages are performing well and which ones are, well, not so much. And let’s not forget about the delightful world of Google Analytics and other SEO tools where we can glean insights into how users interact with our website.

If you set up an email marketing campaign or paid ads on social media that lead readers to your homepage, you can check to see how beneficial those efforts have been.

Take Time to Refine

If you think your job (or ours) is done after getting your app or website out into the world, you’re in for a surprise. The truth is, launching is just the beginning. To keep your users engaged, you need to continually refine their experience over time. Audit everything about your site, from technical SEO to user experience.

And don’t rely solely on marketing tools to do the work for you. Take ownership of your own website and use it as a platform to communicate with and gather feedback from your users. It may seem like a lot of work, but your users will thank you for it.

Lift Can Build Up Your Website

Launching a new website can be a complex and challenging endeavor, but with the right partner by your side, it can become an invigorating project to take on. We can help you identify objectives, create project plans, develop, and launch your site with an eye for aesthetics and usability, test, and optimize as needed before launch and equip you with analytics to monitor results afterward. Plus we’re here if you need help refining user experiences after launch.

If you still have FAQs about crafting the perfect web pages, reach out to Lift Marketing today!