7 Things to Do Before You Launch Your Website
Imagine this: you just got your website revamped and designed by the hottest graphic design company in town and you got a little too excited to launch your website.
Before doing the essential final checks, you put your website into the world.
Now you realize that you should have waited a bit because your website wasn’t completely ready yet.
Does this scenario sound familiar?
If you are about to launch your website soon, you need to take a step back and do some pre-launch checks first.
Read on to find out what the best way to launch a website is.
Don’t Forget to Set Up Google Analytics
Does the thought of setting up Google Analytics make you panic? Well, you need to get over that irrational fear and start using Analytics to your advantage.
It’s easy enough to set up and once it’s good to go, it will give you mounds and mounds of useful information on your website visitors.
Also, make sure to take one day a week or a month after your website launch to gauge what the analytics tell you. This will help you hone your marketing and sales strategy in the future.
Make a Digital Marketing Plan
How will you let the world know that you have a new, more agile, and user-friendly website that you spend hundreds of dollars on?
Well, you will need to have some sort of digital marketing plan to get the word out.
Decide which social media channels you will use, first. Don’t go overboard with it and pick just 2-3 channels where your customers spend the most time.
And then start creating content that’s engaging and visual to post on these social media channels at least once a week.
Also, think about having an email signup form on your website, so you can collect email addresses. You can send out weekly offers on your products or have little tidbits to share with your email subscribers.
Finally, use site core marketing to personalize your marketing, do testing, and measure visitor value.
Check for All Broken Links and 404 Errors
The worst thing in the world as a website user is when you click on a particular link excited to see where it takes you and you realize that it’s a dud.
Do not let this happen to your website visitors. This is especially true if you have spent hundreds or thousands of dollars to revamp your website.
Also, make sure that all the images on your website are working well. You don’t want an empty space where an image is supposed to be.
It looks tacky and makes it seem like the business doesn’t care or is outdated.
Read more: How To Increase SEO Ranking with Link Building?
Check Your Site Speed
You are probably already aware of how quickly website visitors bounce off a website if it takes too long to load. Recent statistics say that 53% of mobile website visitors will leave if the webpage doesn’t load within 3 seconds.
That’s why you mustn’t build a heavy website that takes forever to load, even if it looks beautiful once it does load.
No one is going to stick around long enough to see that beauty in any case.
Get an SSL Certificate
Even if you don’t sell anything on your website, it’s always a good idea to have a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate set up on your website, because it indicates to website visitors and Google that your website is trustworthy and reliable.
If you are selling items on your website, then an SSL certificate is essential.
Google loves websites that have SSL certificates on them and ranks them higher on the search results. It’s such a simple thing to do, and yet so powerful.
SSL certificate assures data integrity and strong security. For unlimited subdomains, you need a proper wildcard SSL cert like DigiCert wildcard, RapidSSL wildcard certificate, Sectigo wildcard SSL, etc. All these wildcards secure the main domain and unlimited subdomains with strong security.
Set Up a Press Release Announcement
Never used a press release announcement to share news about your business? Well, it’s time you changed that habit.
Press releases are a great way of getting your news across to a wide variety of media channels, both traditional and non-traditional.
If you want everyone in your industry to know that you have a brand new website, then use a press release to do so.
Make sure to reach out to influencers in your industry and get them to talk about your website launch in their podcasts or social media channels.
Use all available avenues to make sure your new website launch gets the hoopla it deserves.
Have Some Beta Testers Use Your Website
You might have rummaged about through your new website a couple of times and found nothing wrong. But that doesn’t mean anything.
Find some people from your various circles, like friends, relatives, or even random folks from outside your industry.
Then have them go through your website while you watch them like a hawk. That way you can see how others interact with your website and what stumbling blocks they encounter when trying to find something on your web pages.
This will give you some great ideas on how to improve your website even more.
The more user-friendly your website can be, the more successful it will be. So don’t skip this step.
You Are Now Ready to Launch Your Website
Phew, that was a lot of website launch checks to take in. Are you feeling a little overwhelmed? Don’t worry, you don’t have to do it all today.
A website launch shouldn’t be rushed into and the prelaunch checks should take about 1-2 weeks or even longer. This will ensure you have nothing to worry about with your new website launch.
Did you find this article actionable and engaging? We are glad you found it so. There are many other articles on the launch website on our blog, so keep reading.
