You Launched Your New Website… Now What?
It feels great when you finally launch your new website. You’ve worked on it for weeks or months, and now it’s time to show it to the world. Everything is perfect, and you hope it will lead to more new clients for your business.
But what comes next? Is your work done now that the website has launched?
Keeping a website relevant and up-to-date is a never ending process. Websites aren’t static. From both a marketing and maintenance perspective, your website should be updated on a regular basis.
TESTING
When your site launches, don’t forget to test all of the functionality. Your website visitors will lose a little trust in you if something is broken or not working as expected on your site.
Check each of these areas to make sure they are working properly:
- All links and navigation items: All links should go to the correct pages.
- Contact forms: Make sure you receive the notification that someone contacted you.
- Opt-in forms: Check that subscribers are receiving the resource they requested.
- Anlaytics: Verify that your website analytics are receiving data.
CONTENT CREATION
Creating a website isn’t a one-time task. Continually adding content and updates to your website helps keep it relevant and interesting. Choose the content medium that works best for you. This could be articles, podcasts, case studies, videos, etc. Whichever you choose, a content creation plan is necessary to stay on track.
Decide how often you want to post new content, then put tasks on your calendar to make sure you follow through. The frequency is up to you. Try one of these schedules: once per week, every other week, or once per month.
DRIVING TRAFFIC
Your new website is useless if no one is visiting it. There are hundreds of ways to drive traffic to your website. Don’t feel overwhelmed by all of the options. Simply choose a couple of methods to focus on.
What works for an e-commerce store probably won’t work for a B2B business. Determine where your target audience spends time to help you focus on the right options.
Here are a few ideas:
- Social media (Linkedin is a good option for B2B professionals)
- Email newsletters
- Content syndication (Linkedin and Medium are popular platforms)
- Paid advertising
- Cold outreach
- Guest appearances (as a guest blogger or podcast guest)
MAINTENANCE & SECURITY
Keeping your website secure and maintained is essential. Dealing with a website that has been hacked or infected with malware is a huge headache. Do everything you can to stop this before it happens.
There are a few ways to keep your website secure. First, keep all software up-to-date. One of the most common website building platforms is WordPress. Spammers constantly look for websites running outdated versions of WordPress, and attack them because they’re vulnerable.
Second, use a security system such as Sucuri or Wordfence (if you’re on WordPress). They can provide a firewall, and perform regular scans to make sure your site stays clean.
Finally, keep regular backups of your website. Your web host should do this for you, but you can also use plugins or other software to backup your site manually.
TRACK METRICS
Tracking your website metrics doesn’t need to be complicated or time consuming. It can help you determine if your website is performing well, or if you need to put more effort into online marketing. This article can help you decide which metrics are worth tracking.
Check your stats about once per month. Ideally you will notice steady improvement in areas such as website traffic and email subscribers. Use this knowledge to make decisions about web traffic sources and content creation ideas.
This article was originally published at rosypost.com
