Post-Launch Essentials for Website
You’ve sat through the planning meetings, gone through the must-haves and all the reviews, and your website is finally ready for take-off. Finally, you can sit back and watch the web traffic pour in and sales skyrocket. Not so fast! Launching a new website is a big step in building your online presence and defining your brand, but it’s not the end of the journey — it’s actually the beginning of your digital marketing effort.
The minute you launch your new site, there are some necessary steps you must take to ensure your hard work soars and your launch is a successful one.
Look back at your SEO
Your SEO efforts can make a huge difference in searchability, visitor traffic and overall utility. Your pages, headlines and meta descriptions should be optimized for search. Perform Google searches to see how pages are being displayed in search results. You don’t need to be a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) expert to test things out. Simply start searching as if you were a prospect, and see where your company comes up. If you are unsure how to get started with SEO, we offer a fully managed SEO service at Aha!
Test your forms again
Submission forms are routinely tested before launch. Everyone wants to make sure they receive those hot leads. However, it’s just as important to test after launch to make sure that the forms on your website submit properly, your email notifications are hitting the correct inboxes, and any external emails are current and correct. This is especially critical for B2B marketing where longer sales cycles, higher value leads and often lower volume differ from B2C.
Continue to check for quality
It’s important to verify that any link redirects are working and that all public pages are being indexed by search engines. If search engines are not indexing pages they should be, not only can they not see them, but more than likely neither will users. One way to help combat this is to submit an XML site map of the new site to major search engines. Additionally, to catch smaller things like dreaded spelling errors, try asking someone who is not tied to the project or your company to review with fresh eyes. Their perspective can not only help, but clue you in to user experience.
Make your site your best salesperson
In the competitive market, it’s essential to build a site that offers unique functionality that your target audience can benefit from. Use a compelling call-to action that leverages these site features and encourages people to visit, visit now and visit often. Start a Google Ads campaign, consider remarketing, post updates on social media, etc. There are many ways you can cast your line and reel visitors into your site where you can convert them to customers. Tweak your approach and fine-tune your digital marketing strategy based on what works best.
Keep your website up to date
Nothing’s worse than letting your shiny new website go stale. An effective site launch makes a promise that the caliber of content visitors get will be regularly updated and is a big reason for them to return. Make a content calendar that sets an appropriate cadence for your customers. Keep a steady stream of blog articles, news posts and thought leadership pieces coming and ensure that products and services reflect your latest offerings. Also, be honest about your content marketing capability. If what you have in-house needs a boost, consider ordering out for creativity. In addition to the link connection, we also have to incorporate any additional images and create keywords that incorporate them.
The evolution continues. At AHA! we will make all roads lead back to your website. Today more than ever, a site is not just the foundation of your digital marketing, but the hub of your marketing strategy overall. Think of your customers as the pilot, and position your company and by extension your website as a guide that gets them to the destination. Our job is to keep the ship moving in the right direction.