Your pre-launch checklist
A new site launch can be a great opportunity to reconnect with existing customers or get the attention of new ones. It’s worth having a well planned approach to make sure you maximise the impact. When we work on projects with clients, we discuss a launch strategy and we’re happy to help as much or little as needed. We can provide templates for your social sites and work on posts or just leave it with you to shout about! Here are some of the important things to remember to get it right - happy reading!
Do your testing
There’s nothing worse than having a beautifully designed website with fabulous content, if the moment someone logs on they spot a broken link, an image doesn’t load or they can’t access the site in the browser they’re using or on their device. It gives an unprofessional impression and leaves potential customers wondering where else you may lack attention to detail. As part of any build we make sure we allow plenty of time for testing. We proof read the copy, check all images, test every link, click each button and make sure the site works in different browsers and across all the major devices.
Optimise your site
You’ve probably noticed that we’ve mentioned search engine optimisation (SEO) quite a lot recently on our jargon buster and our blog. To make sure your site is easily found by organic traffic via search engines like Google or Bing you’ve got to ensure your content is strong, page titles and descriptions are updated, slugs (links to specific pages) are relevant and clear and that you’re constantly reviewing your content. Read up more in our blog!
Make sure you’re brand is consistent
If you’ve revamped your site and changed its colours or adopted a new font, you might want to check that your brand is consistent across other digital channels such as your social media. Do you need to update your logo or change fonts or colours? Having consistency will help customers instantly recognise you and make your business look and feel professional.
Decide how you’re going to launch
There are lots of different ways you can launch your site on and offline. You’ll want to think about what best suits your customer base - maybe getting it out on social channels, launching it at an event (when we aren’t in lockdown!), to coincide with a significant date or you might want to think about doing it as part of a competition to drive additional engagement. Whichever avenues you choose, make sure you have a plan for each and know when you are going to roll out your site. You could also consider a soft launch to a smaller group for feedback, followed by a broader launch or maybe a big bang option works best.
Get the timing right
Carefully planning the timing of your launch will make sure you get noticed immediately. Think about when your customers are most likely to engage. If you’re targeting business people perhaps a launch during core working hours makes most sense. If you’re hitting consumers, perhaps the evening or weekend would be better. Before going ahead with a big bang you’ll want to make sure your site is up and running and any domain switch overs are completed (they can take several hours to seed) before you shout about it.
We hope these tips are useful - we pride ourselves on attention to detail - even if you just want us to give your site a once over before your release it to the world we’d be delighted to help so get in touch!
