6 THINGS TO DO RIGHT AFTER YOUR WEBSITE IS LAUNCHED
So your site is finally available and ready to launch. Fantastic news! You’re now a fully operational business, congrats!
To ensure a successful site launch, there are a few things you should do right after your website has become live.
Sadly, many people avoid these steps, but having done them ensures you’re starting off on the right foot. Why not take just a little extra time to give your business the best chance of success?
Even if some of these things are intimidating, just take one step at a time and you’ll get there. Plus, you can find a lot of detailed instructions on how to do these things on my blog as well as other places online. So let’s get started!
1. SET UP GOOGLE ANALYTICS
Google Analytics is a tracking and marketing tool that every website owner should use.
It tracks your audience and their actions on your site. It comes with detailed information about everything related to your site’s content and visitors, such as the most viewed pages, conversion rates, the number of visits per day, in-depth user profiles, bounce rates, and lots of other essential stats.
Even if you’re not ready to get started with Analytics just yet, simply set it up for now. I know this part can be very scary for those who are not tech-savvy. It took me a while to learn how to read my Google Analytics too!
However, it can take a few months for Google to collect accurate data, so it’s worth setting it up now and you can always learn to read it later.
2. SET UP BASIC SEO
There is a lot to know about SEO and you can quickly get lost and overwhelmed by all things related to SEO.
However, there are a few basics that should be implemented as soon as your site is created, so you can start building your foundation right without wasting any time.
To make it easy on you, I already put together detailed instructions on the first steps in this post: GETTING STARTED WITH SEO – WHAT TO DO FIRST.
3. CREATE A CUSTOM 404 PAGE
Creating a custom 404 page helps both your SEO and your site organization. It makes your site look even more professional. It simply means that if anyone ever clicks on an old link that is no longer valid on your site, they’re taken to a page that redirects them to another page (the 404 page). This allows you to keep the visitor on your site instead of losing them.
Check out more details on this post I wrote before: HOW TO CREATE A CUSTOM 404 PAGE IN SQUARESPACE (AND WHY YOU NEED IT).
4. CUSTOMIZE YOUR FACEBOOK PREVIEW IMAGE
Pretty soon you’ll be ready to share your new site on Facebook. But before you do that, make sure when you copy your website URL into a Facebook post that it appears the way you like it.
If you don’t do anything here, Facebook will automatically generate an image from your home page, but it doesn’t always look pretty.
To customize it and make sure it appears professionally, read this post here: HOW TO CHANGE THE FACEBOOK LINK PREVIEW IMAGE FROM YOUR SQUARESPACE WEBSITE.
5. SHARE IT WITH THE WORLD
Ahh now the fun part! Share your website with everyone! Now that your site is live, it’s time to post the link to it on social media and invite people to come check it out.
Also, share it with all the people you already know so they can help you spread the word. Then make sure to add the link to your site in every single one of your social media profiles. Have an email list already? Announce it to them too!
6. GET NEW BUSINESS CARDS
Now that you have your website URL in place, it’s also time to create some business cards.
Even if you run your business mainly online (like I do), it’s still good to have some professional business cards on file. You never know who you meet when you’re networking or are simply out and about.
Whenever people ask what you do and express a bit of interest in your business, you can be ready to offer them a card so they can visit your site for more information. It’s always great to be prepared. :)