Last modified July 18, 2021
The launch of your new website is one of the most important moments in the life of a business and constitutes the basis of your marketing to represent your brand to your target audience.
If you have a new website in development, check out these 10 steps to ensure your launch is successful.
Step 1: Set your goal for your website
This is going to seem counterintuitive, but you have to deal with it. Launch your website project by thinking about your end goal from the start. What do you want your website to actually do?
Do you want it to attract new readers to your eBook?
Should they display your portfolio so that higher paying clients will turn to you?
Are you looking to set up a lead generator that works while you sleep?
Or are you creating an online store to sell your products online?
Either way, you need to think about your end goal first.
This step helps ensure that each component you create and add to your site aligns with your goal. If you skip this step, you will have big headaches later, which is sometimes why it is important to go through a web agency. You will end up spending countless overtime hours developing our next steps because you never created a solid game plan.
Step 2: Plan for search engine optimization (SEO)
While you don’t need to be an SEO expert to start ranking in search engines, it’s important to have some basics in place. SEO is the process of increasing the visibility and traffic of your site by search engines. There are several important elements of good SEO, there are keyword research, title tag, internal links, backlinks and many others.
Make sure your site is mobile-friendly. If you have a WordPress site, start by installing the right plugins. This will allow you to at least cover the basics.
Step 3: Prepare 5-10 pieces of good quality content
Any promotion strategy you use will depend heavily on the content. Visitors will expect to see great content that will be very useful in your niche. If they don’t, they’ll probably never visit your site again. Before launching your site, write at least 5-10 pieces of high-quality, informative content. If you can get at least 1200 words per article, you have the best chance of ranking in search engines and getting links to your site. So, once your site is ready to launch, you can publish at least 5 pieces of content to start.
Step 4: Choose your domain name
The domain name or URL is the website address that someone types in to find your site. The idea behind your URL is to make it very easy for your audience to remember and find your brand’s website. You should know that your website will not be immediately found by search engines, so if your visitors cannot find your URL correctly, they may never find your site and all the work you have done to complete this guide will be lost.
You also need to consider what your audience will be looking for. Visitors looking for consultants, solopreneurs, and creatives who sell under their professional names can only search on real names. Using your real name as a URL helps visitors find your site quickly. You can also consider using keywords from your industry as your domain name. Also discover our comparison of domain name providers.
Step 5: Choose the right host
Website hosting is a service that allows organizations and individuals to publish a website or web page on the Internet. A website hosting service provider is a company that provides the technologies and services necessary for the website or web page to be viewed on the Internet. Websites are hosted, or stored, on special computers called servers. When people want to visit your website, they simply type the URL or domain of your website into their browser. Their computer will then connect to your server and your web pages will be transmitted to them by the browser.
In short, hosting is the space you rent for your address, or URL, to be parked. It’s not visible on the front of the page to your visitors like your URL, but it’s what fuels the space where your website lives. Even if you don’t really see it, it’s essential that you choose the right hosting plan to meet your needs. The wrong choice could make your website look unprofessional or, even worse, collapse under heavy traffic. Either way, you risk ruining your potential customers’ experience and losing them.
Furthermore, there are many French web hosts if you want to choose a local provider.
Step 6: Choose the right CMS for your site
If you’re building your own website from scratch and don’t have a lot of coding experience, it’s in your best interest to choose a content management system, or CMS, that you can work with to make your life easier. CMS stands for Content Management System. A CMS is a computer software or application that uses a database to manage all content, and it can be used when developing a website. A CMS can therefore be used to update the content and/or structure of your website.
Basically, CMS is just a fancy term for the tool that brings your website to life. In the dashboard, you can change the appearance of your website, create new pages, portfolios and posts for your blog, and manage images, videos and other digital media . And you can do all of this without having to touch any code. This is how you will manage your website like a real pro.
Most CMS these days are designed to be intuitive and very easy to use (they usually offer a drag-and-drop editor). So, if you can use Facebook, you should be able to use a CMS without any problems. An example of a popular CMS is WordPress, but there are other site building software that might be suitable for those with less technical skills, such as Wix or Shopify.
Using Wix and Shopify will be easier, since you just need to register and purchase a domain and set your plan there. For WordPress, the process might be a little longer (but still simple, I promise). You will first need to install WordPress on your web hosting provider. From there, you should follow a few steps to set up your site.
Step 7: Design your website
To design your website, two options are available to you. The first is to hire an expert and the second is to do it yourself. If you can afford to hire a web agency, you may be able to find a freelancer who specializes in the type of website you are looking to create. These experts will give you tips for placing (and changing the color) elements like buttons and calls to action, so you can still grab your visitors’ attention and increase conversions without looking drastic. ‘a mess.
But don’t worry if you can’t afford to hire a professional designer. These days, there are millions of high-quality themes that are super easy to set up and look just as professional as a hand-designed theme. When designing your own website, always include conversion elements like a landing page, CTAs or email list signup.
Step 8: Log in to Google Analytics
Every brand should know the details of its website analytics, how visitors engage with its content, and overall site performance. Given the time and effort you’re going to put into promoting your site, it’s important that you know exactly how much traffic you’re getting and where those visitors are coming from. Google Analytics is free, easy to set up, and will help you determine exactly which strategies are working and which aren’t. Here are all the steps to connect your site to Google Analytics.
Step 9: Log in to Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a set of tools put in place by Google to help you manage the health of your site in search engines. If Google finds any issues with your site, this is where you will be notified. Some of the most important information you can get after your site is verified is a list of links to your site, manual actions (penalties) taken against your site, if Google is having difficulty accessing certain parts of your site and whether your site is considered “mobile-friendly” or not. Discover our tutorial for installing your site in Google Search Console.
Step 10: launch your website!
Now that your site is ready for prime time, marketing is key to building awareness, and there are many ways to encourage new people to visit your site.
- Social media. Share links across all your social channels and consider investing in targeted paid social ads to find new people for your audience with specific criteria, like those who are local or have common interests.
- Natural referencing: As explained above, implement a real SEO strategy to attract visitors via the keywords in Google searches carried out by users.
- Sales incentives: Create a promotional code for people who visit your site, offering benefits like free shipping, a special download, or a discount if they sign up for your email list. Contests are also a great way to create excitement and drive traffic.
- Automation: Once someone signs up for your email list, automated emails can help keep your brand top of mind and encourage future visits to your site.
Passionate about the web and entrepreneurship, I founded Digitiz in 2016. My goal is to pass on my experience to you and to be able to save you time in choosing your tools.
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