I launched my website...now what?

Creating a brand new website for your business is a big accomplishment. There are countless hours that go into designing, coding, reviewing, testing, and publishing a website. However once the website is launched, what do you do next?

Here are the top 7 things you should remember to do AFTER your website is launched.

1. Promote it

It's really easy to forget to promote your website. Make sure to put your web address on business cards, brochures, signs, etc. Also send out an email blast and Facebook post announcing that you have a new website and people should check it out.

It's also a good idea to give people another reason to go to your website, such as offering web-only specials or coupons. People love to get a good deal, and once they've visited your site it will be easier to get them to return.

2. Check your statistics.

Early on, you can expect to see small amounts of traffic to your brand new website.  Make sure that you check your website hits about once a week or so, especially early on, just to see what pages are getting hits, where your visitors are coming from, how long they're staying on each page, etc.

You'll also want to make adjustments based on your findings. For example, if your "About Us" page is getting a fair amount of visitors, but no one is staying on the page for more than a couple seconds, maybe you should consider sprucing up the content to make it more interesting, or adding some pictures.

3. See where you land in the search engine rankings.

Where your website appears in the search engines is extremely important. Everyone wants to be on the top of page #1, but that isn't easy.

There are a large number of keywords that you can type into Google to find your website. For example, an easy one is your company name: "Fresh Look Web Design". Or you can do a more general search: "web design". Or general term + geographic location: "hampton virginia web design".

We recommend checking your position in the search engine rankings every couple months at the least, to see where you appear. This is particularly important if you are actively trying to improve your position in the search engines. Which leads us to our next topic...

4. Improve your search engine ranking.

This could be a whole series of articles by itself, but we'll direct you to our SEO Checklist if you want to get some general ideas for improving your ranking. The idea we want to get across in this article however is that it's an ongoing process that continues long after you launch your site. You have to work at it, because your competition is doing the same.

5. Add new information

Sometimes it's hard to remember to post things to your website. Think about all the information you share on a regular basis: event information, newsletters, special offers, board meeting announcements, etc. As you go through the day to day business, make sure to put this information on the website.

6. Remove outdated information

This is so easy to forget, however it's important to do. You do not want outdated information on your website. Sometimes it helps to have an archive section where you intentionally put old info, and that's fine. But you don't want your users to see you promoting an event that is 2 months old...it just doesn't reflect too well on your business. Try to remove outdated information promptly.

7. Be patient

A website is not like a microwave that will just zap your business into success. It's more like a really great recipe that will in time produce a delicious meal - if you put forth the effort. Be patient while you're making your website work...keep up with it, update it, check the status and try new things. In time it will turn into something delicious!

3 Keys to Web Usability

In a future post, I'm going to talk about the 3 Pillars of an Effective Website. One of those pillars is usability. There are probably a lot more keys to usability than just 3 but here we talk about 3 of the more important ones - consistency, intuitive, and easy.

Consistency - It's vital that a webpage remains consistent from page to page. The navigation menu needs to stay in the same place, the banner should remain the same, etc. That doesn't mean the design has to be boring or EXACTLY the same...but the layout certainly should. One thing to keep it interesting is by having different pictures on different pages...or using a random function to produce different content on different pages.

The reason you want to keep it consistent is because you don't want to lose your web users. If they click a link that brings them to a page on your site that throws them off, they're likely to get confused and leave.

Intuitive - The idea here is to make things easy to predict. You want your web users to feel confident in what will happen when they do certain things. You also want your navigation to make sense. If you have a "Get Involved" link - you want the sub categories under that link to be things like "Donate", "Volunteer", and "Join". It should just make good sense.

Make sure that any links on your sites leading to other websites (such as a resource page) open in a NEW navigation window. Your web users will click it, read it, and close it. If it opens in the same window as your website, they just closed out your website. Not a good practice.

Another thing to remember in making things intuitive is that you want to make the links throughout your site LOOK like links. Don't give regular text color or underlining if it's not a link. Users will try and click it to no avail which will simply frustrate them. See? That was a cruel trick. Make sure links look like links.

Easy - One of the common phrases in web design is "Don't make me think". Things should be easy: easy to find, easy to navigate, easy to interact, easy to leave. Always keep this in mind when positioning elements on a page. This is similar to the intuitive concept, but takes it a step further. If there is information on your site that is important that users see...put it on the front page! No sense in hiding it somewhere they may not find. Make things easy on them.

If you're having a web developer create your website, just make sure that what he's creating is easy on the user. Oftentimes a developer will create something that is easy on HIM, the developer...not your users. Don't let him get lazy - if it seems like your web users have to be internet experts to use your site then you need to change some things.

Hopefully these ideas will be able to get you started on making a really user friendly website. Stay tuned as more posts will be coming out in the upcoming weeks.