Are you launching your website soon and wondering what you need to know to make the most of it?
Well, it sure is exciting to know that your website is all set and ready for viewing by the public. As a business or organization, you can use your website launch to promote your company and spread brand awareness to as many people as you possibly can.
Here are ten ways you can make the most out of your website’s launch.
1. Notify colleagues and partners
Your colleagues, partners and even some of your friends might have been involved in the process of designing and launching your website in some way. So when your website is finally ready for launch, it is only fair that they should be the ones who get to have a first look at the new site.
You can even organize a special party for these selected few persons whom you think inspired or helped you along the way in creating the site, or even your entire company. They can even provide you with their honest and valuable feedback as the first users of the website.
2. Announce the launch online
Many companies announce the launch of their new website online via ads on social media or even through a press release. In fact, the fastest way to spread the news about your new website launch is by advertising it online itself.
In this way, your audience will be immediately informed about the exact day and date on which you are planning the official launch of your website. You can even provide your website’s link in the press release so that people can get directed to your website more easily.
3. Use digital marketing techniques
As mentioned in the previous point, you can make use of your company’s social media pages to inform your audience about the new website launch. Furthermore, you can even use other digital marketing sources to spread the message across to a wider audience.
You can consider using email marketing, blog sites, or even search engine marketing to advertise your new website and even draw in the maximum amount of visitor traffic on the first day of the launch itself. Making use of digital marketing platforms will always help in drawing in your desired visitor traffic.
4. Submit your website to online directories
When you submit your website on any of the directories like Dmoz, Google My Business, and other online and industry specific directories, you help improve the visibility of your website online. So if any internet user doesn’t know the correct URL of your newly launched site, they can go to these directories to find you website. Here they can type the name of your business or mention your products and the directory will redirect them to the pages of your website. When you ensure that your site is visible enough, you will not have any shortage of visitors.
5. Submit your sitemap to search engines
Another way to improve website visibility or searchability is by submitting your website’s sitemap to all major search engines. All of the different pages of your website are included in the sitemap of your website. When you submit this to search engines, you make it easier for them to crawl your website. If a search engine can easily crawl your site, then it may get a better rank on search results, thus helping visitors find your new website faster.
6. Monitor site popularity with Google Alerts
Once your website is launched you should check to see how well it’s doing online. If a lot of internet users are impressed with your website, they will surely mention it to others via social network sites, forum, etc. The best way to track these website mentions is through Google Alerts.
This tool can help you track your website’s mentions on the internet on a daily basis. You just have to enter the name of your company or website on Google alerts and whenever someone mentions your website anywhere, or if some news has been released about your company, then you will receive an alert message on your registered email address.
7. Track performance with Analytics
After your website has launched, you must definitely be eager to see how many hits it’s been getting or the number of views that it has received. Google has a great tool which can be used specifically for this purpose called Google Analytics.
It can be used to help monitor and track website traffic and to give you accurate reports on the total number of users who have visited the site over the past few days or months. You can even get valuable information about the type of audience visiting your website like their location details and also which parts of the site they usually engage with.
8. Provide incentives to draw in a larger audience
It is sometimes in your best interest to offer something of value to your customers to get them to check out your website. Incentives like a free trial period on any particular product or discounts on certain services can help a lot in getting people to try out your offerings.
The key thing about providing incentives is for them to be truly beneficial to both your customer and YOU. This means that you should get some sort of contact information from the customer when they claim the incentive or discount. There’s a term for this — landing pages. For more information about landing pages, please visit How to Increase Landing Page Conversions
9. Get online reviews
Getting positive online reviews or testimonials from previous happy customers can help improve your company’s reputation and even build up some anticipation or even excitement about your new website launch. When people see user reviews on a certain product, they can make an informed decision and will begin to trust your company, your products, services and of course, even your new website.
The most effective location of your online reviews will be on your Google My Business page and your Facebook company page. The reviews on your Google My Business will help you stand out from your competitors as these reviews will show when your company is Googled. They will also help boost your SEO as Google recognizes your site and company as authentic and credible. Another great place to have satisfied customers leave reviews is on your Facebook company page since Facebook is still the largest social network. These reviews, believe it or not, will also contribute to boosting your SEO as social network popularity is also a search engine ranking factor.
Don’t forget to push reviewers towards industry specific online review sites as well, such as Zomato and OpenTable for restaurants. The more the merrier!
10. Gain more visibility with PPC campaigns
For those of you who are adventurous and welcome some risk into your digital marketing diet, use Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns to get an immediate stream of quality traffic to your website. Google and Facebook have very powerful advertising systems that allow you to select specific audience demographics and target them. These campaigns ads will run on many search results pages and so can help you tremendously in generating enough awareness for your upcoming website launch.
We hope this article has inspired you and will help you make the most of your website’s launch. If you have any other ways to maximize your site launch, please feel free to share a few tips related to this in the comments section below.