So you have a new website, it’s launched and looks great. Congratulations! But now what do you do?
A website isn’t just there to look good, it’s there to bring in awareness about your business and bring in new leads and customers. This doesn’t happen by ‘sitting still’. Now you have a new website, it’s time for the real work to start.
A new website doesn’t end with the launch. It’s just the beginning.
A good website is worthless if people can’t find it, don’t use it to contact you or buy your products. Your potential customers are out there but can they find you?
Don’t launch a great website then neglect it.
Here’s 8 things to consider after launching your website to make sure it is truly successful.
1. Let your email subscribers know
If you have a newsletter subscriber list, you should share your new website with them. This is free traffic to your website from a source you control and own.
This is a no-cost way to get some highly relevant traffic to your site. Be sure to include a call to action in the email too. Give them a reason to actually click and go to your new site.
This could be redeeming a discount or promotion in association with the site launch.
With that email sent out, where else can we share it?
2. Share on Social Media
Use social media to get noticed! It’s free to sign up for popular social platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube and LinkedIn. Figure out which platform is most popular with your target audience. Social media for your business or brand is an easy way to take up more of the Google Search Engine Result Page (SERP). Not only does this give you more places pointing to your website, it allows people to follow along without having to consistently visit the site.
With all of the appropriate accounts created, start sharing your site updates, new blog posts, seasonal deals, and more on them. Give people a reason to follow you and even better a reason to click on your Call to Actions you are posting about.
If you have existing social media accounts for any of your other sites or brands a great way to cross-promote your new site is to share it with your other audiences. If there is absolutely no overlap this might not always be a great idea, but if you think the audience would like the contents of your new site then share away!
3. Plan Your SEO Strategy
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) should be an on-going part of your website and marketing plans. SEO is extremely important in todays’ digital world and no paying attention to it will mean handing over business to your competition. When created correctly, an SEO strategy will bring in more website visitors for you, thereby increasing leads & sales. Your competitors are actively engaging in SEO and you need to be ahead of the game.
SEO: If you want to rank you need a strategy
If your site is not ranking on Google, all your wonderful website design is wasted. Your customers are turning to Google daily, searching for thousands of search terms. So naturally, you want to appear at the top of the ranking for those search terms that are relevant to your business.
Some website developers get so focused on building a great looking site that they add features that negatively impact SEO. Like flashy, overlarge images that take ages to download, or a good-looking yet illogical structure that makes navigation difficult.
A good SEO strategy will ensure that the technical site structure is right, and that it delivers quality engaging content and builds external backlinks. It’s a long-term, strategic approach. It’s rare to see new sites getting to first place in weeks. So you need to be patient. Finding a good SEO agency can deliver thousands of high quality leads to your business, so unless you want to DIY, it’s well worth the investment.
For more info about SEO, see here.
4. Plan your marketing strategy
Every business needs an ongoing marketing stategy and your website is a large part of this. Your marketing campaigns should, ideally be planned months in advance. For example, it’s a bit too late planning your Christmas campaign in December – your competition will have started to plan this in June / July (seriously). All of your marketing, whether print advertising, business branding, TV, radio, website or social all need to work together. You need to make sure that your website has some great landing pages or blog posts for specific marketing campaigns. You also need to make sure that your website is kept up-to-date so that it’s ready for any extra campaign traffic. See more about marketing here.
5. Update & create new content – OFTEN
If you thought your new website was a ‘set and forget’ process, I’m afraid you’re wrong. Search engines, like Google, like to see new content on a website – often. A website that doesn’t get content updates very often looks stagnant to them and they will lower the website’s ranking. On the other hand, active websites are rewarded with higher search rankings. By updating your site content regularly, search engines will consider your site active. For this reason, many companies engage in content marketing where they have a blog or other digital content to drive traffic.
The number one thing you can do to fuel your website’s long-term growth is to steadily create new content. It’s how you share your expertise.
6. Google Ads for a quick result
New websites can take up to a few months to gain momentum on search engines – and that’s assuming that your website has the correct marketing and content creation in place. This organic reach takes time, but if you want to appear on page one right this instant, you can. With Google Ads, you can advertise on the Google search results and appear in the first three or four listings, with the organic listings following beneath the advertisements.
Whilst organic SEO is definitely more important for the longterm, if you aren’t willing to wait to build up your website ranking, you can get to page one today with Google Ads. Google Ads is Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, meaning that you only pay if someone clicks on your ads. You can set your daily budget & you can stop or restart your campaigns at any time. Contact us for advice about Google Ads.
7. Plan for Ongoing Maintenance
All websites need regular maintenance. Keeping your new website up-to-date helps prevent software bugs and security issues, it also helps to keep your SEO on track.
Between adding new pages, updating relevant info, and maybe even updating plugins you will want to make sure someone is responsible for making these changes happen. A monthly or even bi-monthly check-in should be enough to stay on top of any site maintenance you may need.
This step does not have to be hard but is important to keep on your radar.
8. Monitor your website’s progress
Google Analytics is an essential tool to track the progress of how your website is performing. Without this, you’ll be flying blind, not knowing what pages of your site are delivering and what customers are truly looking for. Analytics can tell you:
- who’s looking at your site
- what pages they visit
- how long they stay
- the navigation path they follow
- if they convert (eg complete an email sign up form)
Analytics and Evaluation: know where you are, and where you’re headed
You can use Google Analytics to create goals for your site, and assess your success in achieving those goals. It’s complicated stuff, but it’s vital to have this knowledge (and revisit it regularly) to see how your site is performing for you.
Measure the progress of your website at regular intervals. Check Google Analytics at least weekly, to make sure people are still finding your site. Watch out for sudden dips or spikes in web traffic because it could mean something on your site isn’t tracking properly.
On a weekly or monthly basis, compare your website’s performance to the previous week or month. How are people getting to your site? Which pages are they landing on and through which pages are they exiting? Use this information to improve your website.
If they’re all coming to your website through Twitter, start a Twitter account and bring in even more Twitter users. If they’re exiting your home page after only staying a few seconds, review your home page. Is it difficult to navigate? Has it been a long time since it was last updated? Keeping tabs on your progress will help you improve your website and keep it relevant to your audience. This will then create a better ranking, better audience revisists and more leads, sales and customers.
Next Step
Launching a site is a time to pause and celebrate! The heavy lifting is done!
After you are up and running there are plenty of opportunities to improve your site, find more traffic, and expand your content. Take a step-by-step approach as highlighted here.
Now to get started!
Websites should evolve regularly—let us manage the journey
Your website is an ever-changing digital asset. It should not remain the same as the day you launched. Instead, it should be used, reviewed and constantly updated with fresh engaging content—landing pages, blogs and videos.
If you’d rather not try to add engaging content, often, get your head around analytics, muddle around with social media, learn the metrics of newsletters or understand organic versus paid SEO, then get in touch with Coast Creative.
We offer a number of post-launch digital marketing approaches to ensure your new website won’t get lost in the crowd. You’ll get a strategic action plan, a dedicated account manager, design support, and a combination of the necessary elements to make your campaign a success.
We love nothing better than planning, brainstorming and thinking about all the possibilities for our clients’ businesses. Regular work we do includes:
- Brochoures, flyers, postcards, business cards and other marketing collateral
- Website refresh and content updates (online store updates, new content, images etc)
- Social media management & content creation
- Art direction & creative design
- Blog posts & content creation
- Branding updates
- Email campaigns/newsletters: loading, testing and sending of campaigns and asset creation
- Mailchimp integration & support
- Klaviyo integration & support
- SEO campaigns
- Marketing consultation, strategy and support
- Website maintenance – backups, update software, check for issues, SEO health
- Digital marketing & advertising
