Make sure your launch goes smoothly by preparing well beforehand.
Launching a new website is an exciting experience, but it can also be a stressful one.
You’ve likely spent a great deal of time and money configuring your website to offer an excellent user experience, with all the features your visitors will expect. You’ve checked and double-checked your most important website elements, and you’re getting ready to hit the button and publish your site for the world to see.
However, you don’t have to go it alone. If you relied on third-party vendors and service providers during the website development process, now is the time to turn back towards them for guidance.
5 Things To Consider Before Launching Your New Website
Website launches can go wrong in any number of ways, and it’s not always directly your fault. Even if your launch is a smooth one, ensuring that it reaches the right people and makes the right impression is a whole different challenge. Take time to consider the following elements of a great website launch and set your business up for the right first impression.
- Time Your Announcement
One of the most common mistakes that business owners make when launching a website is announcing the launch too early. Website development can be a complex process, and unexpected delays are common. If you announce a launch date too early in the development pipeline, you run the risk of having to delay it later on.
There are many things that can delay a website development project, and not all of them are predictable. Certain issues may initially seem like small, easy fixes, but actually, turn out to be much longer and more complex. Many steps in the development cycle are dependent on one another, so delaying one deadline will push back another, which pushes another, and so on.
The best time to announce your new business website is when it is already nearing completion. You should have all of the most important and complex features already integrated, most of the content already written, and a solid roadmap to implementation ready. Even in this ideal scenario, it’s best to keep some cushion room for potential setbacks.
- Set up a Roadmap with Your Designer or Agency
If you worked with a website designer or a digital agency, their website checklist will prove to be a valuable asset for creating a roadmap towards launch. Every reputable web professional has a checklist that covers the most important areas of their work. Ask your web development partners about theirs, and work through that checklist together.
If you do this early enough, the checklist will become a roadmap to successfully launching your website. Holding the partners you work with to solid, well-established expectations is key to ensuring that they can work effectively.
This is especially true if your website development pipeline involves more than one third-party vendor or service provider. If you need to balance working with internal stakeholders, a website developer, a separate marketing agency, and a content writing team, things can quickly get out of hand if you’re not careful. Make sure everybody knows exactly what’s expected of them.
Also, keep in mind that your website launch roadmap won’t end the moment you hit the Publish button and put your site up. Websites need regular maintenance, updates, and security patches, so you’ll want to make sure your team is ready to address those issues moving forward.
- Start Building an Email List Early On
Email remains one of the best and cheapest marketing tools out there, generating $42 for every $1 spent. Regardless of what kind of website you want to build, who your customers are, or how you want to monetize traffic to your site, there’s a good chance that curating an email list will help you achieve your goals.
Emails are also among the easiest pieces of identifiable information you can get from leads and customers. Almost every transaction a user can perform online involves their email address – whether it’s signing up for a newsletter, changing their password, or buying a product. Take those emails and curate a list you can use to promote your website when it’s ready for launch.
The earlier you start collecting emails, the more fuel you’ll have for your post-launch email marketing strategy. You can send discount coupons to email subscribers, send them news and updates about your brand, and give them access to special content that draws them onto your new site.
- Prepare Promotional Materials for Social Media
The other major marketing vehicle that no business owner should do without is social media. Almost everyone knows that social media marketing can work wonders for businesses with newly launched websites, but it’s not always clear exactly how. Choosing the right platform and building a legitimate following isn’t always straightforward.
That’s why it’s best to prepare early and create much of your promotional content beforehand. This will give you the chance to identify your most valuable pieces of content and give them extra visibility during the critical few days directly following your website launch.
Combine video, imagery, and text when creating promotional materials for social media, and make sure the content you post is genuine and valuable to users. Getting social media right can be a challenge, but the rewards of doing so are worth the investment.
- Test Website Functionality Early and Often
As your website launch date draws closer, your designer or agency will have more website functionalities to test and re-test. Take some time to familiarize yourself with these tests and their results, because they’re important.
Testing the same website functionality multiple times over the course of a week or two might seem unusual, but it is necessary. Even the simplest websites contain many moving parts that must work together smoothly.
Small changes to one part of your website can impact other features that depend on them. Exhaustive testing is the best way to ensure that these interdependencies work the way they’re supposed to, ensuring you don’t receive unwelcome surprises on launch day.
For example, you may need to test email forms to make sure you receive incoming messages. If you want to capture those leads automatically and send them promotional materials through a third-party platform, you’ll need to test that as well. If you have a customer relationship management (CRM) platform or a cybersecurity service overseeing this exchange, those will also need testing.
Every single one of those interconnected systems needs to be tested, both as a standalone tool and in concert with the rest of your website stack. Comprehensive testing enables you to rest easy knowing your systems will work properly from day one.
Select the Right Team to Handle Your Website Launch
Finding the right team is one of the main challenges that business owners run into when creating a new website. It can be difficult to find responsible, competent vendors capable of handling the many different tasks that go into website design, development, and publishing. White label web development services can go a long way towards ensuring deadlines are met throughout the process.
UnlimitedWP is a white label WordPress development agency that gives marketers and agency owners the ability to complete unlimited tasks with a low monthly subscription rate. Find out how we can help you prepare your website for launch by speaking to an expert today.
