New Website Launched: essential things to do next

New website launched – hooray! It’s finished. It has been a big effort getting here, so can you relax now, can’t you?

Launching a new website is a significant milestone but it is not the end, it is just the start of the next phase. Now begins the ongoing process of managing and developing your website. This includes:

• Marketing to drive traffic to it.
• Adding new content to keep it fresh and relevant.
• Maintaining it to keep it in good shape and up to date.

Here is a list of essential post-launch activities that will help make your new website a success.

Add website to your email signature

Ensure your email signature includes your key contact details including your website address.

You might also add a statement like “See our new website” or perhaps if you are planning a newsletter “To receive our free monthly newsletter on top tips for …., please visit our site.”

Make it stand out, make it simple – don’t bury it in 20 lines of small print disclaimer!

(Note: there is a legal requirement that business emails should contain registered company contact information.)

Tell everyone you know you have launched a new website

Don’t be shy, tell people what’s new. People you should tell include:

• Your team.
• Your contacts.
• Your clients.

Perhaps ask them for their feedback. They may provide valuable help with suggestions for improvements or things you overlooked.

Set up a Google Business Profile

A Google Business Profile (used to be called Google My Business then before that Google Local Business Listing) is the most effective single thing you can do to improve your chances of being seen for local searches.

If you have a Google Business Profile already – review it, make sure it is up to date and links to your website. Make sure everything you can is completed, check it regularly adding photos and content when and where you can.

And don’t forget to ask your customers to add reviews.

Use Social Media to promote your business

If you feel that social media is not for you then you may be missing out on business. Consider the platforms as marketing tools where you can have a business presence.

The secret to success is that social media is not all about selling, it is about engaging with your audience. Post information that is interesting and useful to your customers. Social media can be a more human and more approachable face for a business.

Watch others and follow their activities. You can learn from them. If they are posting boring rubbish, you can see what not to do and be better than them. If they are posting interesting items, you might also want to join in and comment on their material.

Don’t be boring as you will just be wasting your time, try to add some value and not be just part of the noise.

As well as posting short news stories and other interesting items you can promote your website content. Social media is “in the moment”. Permanent and longer content belong on your website. So when you add something new to your website worthy of broadcasting you can post an extract on social media and link back to your website. Thereby boosting traffic to your website where visitors have the opportunity to find out more about your business. Find out more about Social Media Marketing with this beginners guide.

Create new content for your website and marketing

If nothing changes on your site for a while it will deteriorate in the Google rankings.

Adding good new content to your website regularly will make your site grow, improve and perform better in the search engines. And each new piece of content is a marketing opportunity.

New content could be:

• News – company news, product news, industry news.
• Case Studies – examples of completed projects, how your products are being used at customers.
• FAQs – build up a list of questions you get asked and answers to create a useful bank of information for your customers. If an answer is quite long then you also have material for a full article or blog post.
• Images – something new, relevant, funny or interesting. Social media is driven mainly by images and headlines.
• Videos – people love videos. If you want to know how to do something practical then a video is what people look for. Can you create any videos that would help your customers? They don’t have to be expensive or complicated, just useful, short and to the point. Note however that the videos should be hosted on Youtube or Vimeo and connect to your website or you can post them on Facebook.

Collect testimonials and reviews

You can do this through your Google Business Profile and Facebook Page or just ask customers to drop you an email.

Add them to your website.

Do a regular Newsletter

Newsletters are great ways of keeping in touch with your customers. People have to sign up to receive a newsletter so they are interested and much more likely to buy from you.

Newsletters can be just a simple email, it does not have to be fancy like a magazine. But content has to be worthy otherwise people will soon stop reading and unsubscribe.

You will need

• A sign up mechanism on your website.
• A mass email sending system. Mailchimp and Constant Contact are popular examples. You should not use your website or email system for mass email marketing, they are not designed for this. Your hosting company will set limits and shut you down if you are seen to be breaking their rules or causing problems on their systems doing this.

Keep your website well maintained

Changes to content and technology improvements can affect the health of your website and there are hackers who want to take over your website if they can. There are a number of technical things that need to be done to keep a website fit and healthy. These include:

• Keep backups (daily is best).
• Update software as required (in the case of WordPress this is likely to be very often).
• Keep the site safe and secure. (You would be surprised at how prevalent website hacking is. WordPress websites will experience regular hacking attempts.)
• Ensure the site continues to be mobile friendly (Google monitors this regularly).
• Keep the site running efficiently and quickly (Google prefers fast websites and a lot is being made of Core Web Vitals lately) .

Review how your site is progressing

How are you progressing in Google search results? Is your site getting more visitors? Are you getting business from your website? Is it meeting your expectations?

• Google Analytics is free and will provide you with a host of visitor statistics.
• Google Search Console is free and helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results.

Review your Keywords.

Are you getting found in Google? Do you need to revise your keywords with experience? Should you improve your content to get better results? Do you need to refocus your content on different keywords?

Closing Summary – New Website Launched

Websites that stand still do not deliver results. Your competition is trying hard to be better than you and there is always something new going on.

The days of “doing it now and forget it for 5 years” have gone for websites. So keep your website evolving and improving.