How To Launch a Website

Use this 10‑step website launch checklist to create a website that expresses who you are and supports your business success.

Publishing your website is one of the most exciting milestones for your business. It will form the foundation of your marketing and serve as a hub to represent your brand to your audience, and as such, your website should provide the best user experience. Unfortunately, many businesses have websites that don’t convert because they’re not offering a quality user experience that focuses on their target audience. Instead of promoting how the business can solve problems for customers, the websites appear self-serving.

Even if your website highlights the ways in which your products or services can help potential customers, you must avoid getting hung up on the design. Of course, website design is important, but the overall website strategy will help you find ways to attract new customers and retain the old.

A new website launch comes with many responsibilities. Not only5 you have to build the website, but you have to find different ways to get in front of your target audience. While your website is an effective marketing tool, you’ll need to employ a digital marketing strategy that can help increase website traffic as soon as your new website launches.

When planning your new website launch, you must consider the end user. Your customers must come first, so always build your website to enhance their experience with your brand. Consider the end goal and the different ways your website can support those goals and help visitors convert. It’s also fundamental that you choose a content management system that facilitates your site design, continuous management and optimization, without having to rely on web developers to do every change.

To work its hardest, your site should help each and every visitor easily find a path to what they’re interested in. A successful website experience can range from someone reading a blog post to learn more about your expertise to completing the sign-up process to become a customer—and everything in between.

1. Implement search engine optimization (SEO)

Besides working with web designers (or with a website builder) to make sure that your site has a great look and feel when it’s launched, you should also work with an SEO specialist to ensure your new site’s search friendliness.

SEO is the process of increasing the visibility of—and traffic to—your site through search engines.

Even if you don’t want to start with an SEO process right away, having an SEO friendly web structure when you launch your site will save you from having to do many more changes in the future.

There are several important elements of good SEO to check before launching.

Keywords are words or phrases that a person types into a search engine like Google when they’re looking for information about a particular topic. If you think about how people use search engines, you’ll realize that good keywords are specific and descriptive. They typically include industry and plain language terms your audience uses to speak about their needs. When you include these words or phrases into your site content, search engines find your content and recommend it to users. To identify your most relevant keywords to optimize for, you should do keyword research.
Title tags spell out the purpose of each page on your site to search engines and are used to determine the headline that appears in search results, on social networks, and in the browser tab when someone visits your site. The title tag should be written to clearly explain what the page is and encourage people to click.
Meta descriptions are brief summaries (preferably 160 characters or less) of your site that appear beneath the title tag on the search results page and help you convince potential visitors to click. These should include keywords in a natural, plain-spoken way and describe what the user will see on the page.
Internal links point to other pages on your website. These links help search engines determine the structure of your site and make navigation easier for users by showing them more content relevant to their search, and because of this it’s critical that you check that they work well before launching your website. Backlinks to your website from other websites are also important.

You should also set up a Google My Business page to help improve your local SEO strategy.

2. Enable global styles

Every page on your website should look and feel like it belongs to the same brand. When you create your site, enable global styles so that the same colors, fonts, and logos are consistent across every page.

3. Leverage Track with ZOWNH

Once you publish your new website, you’ll want to monitor the number of new signups and unique visits, so you know who your audience is, when they’re visiting the site, and what they’re looking at. Track with ZWNH can gather this data and add it to your website report.

Depending on what laws apply to your business, you may need to notify page visitors that tracking is happening and give them the opportunity to opt out.

4. Connect to Google Analytics

Every brand should know the details of their website analytics, how visitors engage with their content, and how the site is performing overall. Google Analytics is a free analytics tool you can use to learn more about the demographics of your audience, how much time they spend on your site, and which pages they visit the most. With this information, you can see what’s working best and where there’s room for improvement. You can also use a Google Analytics dashboard to easily view your most important data.

To start measuring your website activity you need to make sure to install Google’s analytics code. Many content management systems facilitate this with an analytics tracking option that you can use to avoid editing your site code directly.

Besides an overall web analytics solution it’s also recommended that you install Google Search Console for your site. This Google tool will inform you for free about the performance of your site in Google’s index and organic search results, if there’s a broken link, XML sitemap, or a schema markup issue, as well as the status of other technical SEO metrics.

5. Include an email signup form

Once you’ve engaged someone on your website, email marketing is a great way to continue that conversation and build an ongoing relationship. Be sure your website features a signup form to collect email addresses from visitors. Regular email communications help you share news and updates that are relevant to your audience and showcase your expertise.

When they first sign up, you might simply ask someone for their name and email address. But, to create more personalized content, consider collecting more information such as birthday, city of residence, or what specific part of your business interests them the most. This extra information can inform future communications.

6. Have a clear call to action (CTA)

Your visitor can’t read your mind, so make sure you have a prominent CTA as the main banner image (or “hero”) on your website. A good CTA is persuasive and clearly explains the task you want readers to perform.

Content on the rest of the page should be directly related to the CTA. For example, explain the benefit of taking the action.
The CTA should use words that are direct, but not pushy. Creating a sense of urgency is great, but strive for an encouraging tone that doesn’t go too far.
Use command verbs to explain where a CTA button leads—don’t ask visitors to “click here.” Instead, try something like “Read more on our blog,” “Buy now,” or “Download the app.”

7. Optimize for mobile

Mobile devices account for more than half of all web traffic, so you need to make sure your site is viewable—and easy to find—for people on the go.

In mobile SEO, good content and links are important, but other elements also need to be considered, like:

URL rendering: the way a URL looks in the address bar
Page rendering: how HTML code is interpreted visually
Mobile-focused markups: the code that helps a page get discovered by a search engine

8. Add a notification bar to be CCPA compliant

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) requires for-profit businesses that collect data from California residents to disclose any collection of data and honor requests to delete that data. While your organization may not be based in the Golden State, visitors from California may visit your website, and you need to be prepared.

Even if you don’t sell personal data, you need to place a clear, visible notification link on your homepage that says, “Do not sell my personal data.” This should lead visitors to a landing page where they can request to have their data deleted. All websites built in ZOWNH will automatically feature a cookie notification bar that lets your visitors opt-in or out of cookie tracking.

Your site’s privacy policy should also be easy to find and include information about the type of information you collect, how personal data is used, and a description of their rights.

9. Test everything

Before you introduce your site to the world, test everything, starting with usability testing.

Check links. Take the time to check that all your hyperlinks—both internal and external—work.
Test how your site looks across different browsers. On both desktop and mobile, make sure everything—from fonts to forms—renders correctly with browser tests. If you don’t have the time to do this manually, consider a service like BrowserStack.
Do a site speed test. Page speed is a ranking factor in Google searches, and consumers are less likely to buy if a page loads slowly. Loading speed of a website can be negatively impacted by numerous things, such as plugins or large images.
Make sure your forms work. If you have an email signup form on your site—and you should—try subscribing with your own address to see if all the automated messages connected with that process, like welcome emails, arrive properly. Also, make sure any contact or feedback forms accept submissions correctly.
Proofread the site. Let friends and coworkers visit the site before it debuts, and review everything. Have them read copy to make sure it’s easy to understand and free of typos.

10. Promote your website

Now that your site is ready for prime time, use all-in-one Marketing Platform to promote it to the world. Marketing is key to driving awareness, and there are many ways you can encourage new people to visit your site.

Social media. Share links across all your social channels, and consider investing in targeted paid social advertising to find new people for your audience with specific criteria, like those in the local area or with shared interests.
Incentives. Create a promo code for people who visit your site offering a perk like free shipping, a special download, or a discount if they sign up for your email list. Contests are also a great way to create excitement and drive traffic.
Automation. Once someone signs up for your email list, automated emails can help keep your brand top of mind and encourage future site visits. These messages can be triggered by events, such as their first visit to your website, their birthday, holidays, sales, reminders to come back and buy something they left in their shopping cart, and more.

How much does it cost to launch a website?

The cost of a new website launch varies depending on your company, its budget, and how you choose to build your website. If you design and build your website yourself, you can save thousands of dollars. However, if you work with a marketing agency, you can expect to spend at least $10,000. You can work with freelance web designers and developers to decrease your costs, but agencies will cost tens of thousands of dollars to launch a new website. Factors that impact the cost of launching a website include:

Upfront costs

There are a few upfront costs associated with building and maintaining a website, including domains, hosting, and SSL certificates.

Web design

If you’re using a website builder, you don’t have to use a web designer. However, web designers can help you improve the user experience and functionality of your website. In addition, these individuals can improve conversion rates because they understand consumer psychology and can use the right colors and paths to help visitors convert into paying customers through design.

Web development

Again, if you’re using a website builder, you don’t need to know how to code. However, web developers can also improve user experience and ensure proper website navigation. They are completely responsible for the website’s performance and can help you make more complex designs look and function properly on the web when themes from website builders can’t. You can have more design options with a web developer because they make anything possible for your website.

Website maintenance

Website maintenance ensures your website is performing at all times. Website developers can be responsible for maintenance to ensure your website is secure and loads quickly.

Copywriting

Your website can have great design and beautiful imagery, but it will be hard to convert visitors if you don’t have sales copy on a page that describes why they should purchase your products or services. Copywriting brings your brand to life and helps to inform website visitors.

Marketing

Even after your website is complete, you still need a way to get visitors. Implementing SEO can help bring in more organic traffic, but you should also consider other marketing avenues, such as paid advertising, to get more traffic and conversions from your site.

When is the best time to launch a new website?

Determining when to launch a new website is just as important as the design and development of the site itself. Before launching your website, create a plan for when to test the website and when to publish it for the public. Not only should you consider your public launch, but there are many internal processes you should ensure are in place before launch. A few things to consider before launching your website include:

User testing: Internally testing your website ensures that everything is working properly before it’s used by real customers.
SEO: SEO should be implemented on all existing pages to help you start ranking as soon as possible.
Advertising around launch: If you want to get more visitors to your site, consider advertising around the time of launch.
External communication to inform customers: If your website launch will interrupt regular business operations, inform your customers to ensure they know the website may be down for a few moments.
Time of day: Consider launching your website when your business is less busy, and the site will get less traffic.

Avoid launching your website on a Friday or during busy times. Ultimately, you want to launch when there will be fewer users on your site to allow for proper testing and catch any problems that may occur before you get large amounts of traffic. If you have an existing website, you can check your analytics to see what time of day has the least amount of traffic and plan to launch then. In most cases, you may have to launch at night after your business has closed.

How should you announce a new website launch?

There are many ways to announce your new website launch. How you choose to market your website depends on your business and its customers. A few options for announcing your new website include:

Social media marketing: Posting on social media is a free way to get the word out about your new website. If you have a robust marketing strategy, you can bring qualified customers to your site from social media.
Press release: If your new website can benefit your customers or offers something unique no other business does, you can announce it to the press using a press release.
Email marketing: If you have a list of subscribers, you can announce your new website launch with an email letting them know what’s changed and how a new website may impact how they do business with your brand.
Promoting offers: The best way to get more people on your new website is to give them something in return. You can promote an offer on social media or through email to get more website traffic and start converting quickly.
Mailers: If your business didn’t have a website before, you could announce a new website launch with traditional marketing methods like mailers. Add a QR code to every mailer to help your customers easily find your website from their smartphones.

Publish a destination for your audience

Follow these best practices, and you’ll have a website that shows off your brand personality and gives each of your audience members a place to engage with you. A website creates the potential for a long-term relationship with your audience, one that works for them and your business.

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