Launching your first website is downright scary.
You might have reached a pain point you didn’t anticipate, or you might be sitting here, reading this blog post, procrastinating building the site for yet another day. (We know the feeling all too well!)
My husband (Andrew) and I built Bluchic from the ground up over the past 6 years, and we have learned a lot along the way about how to effectively launch business sites and start to build a lasting customer base.
Want to learn my 8 tips for what to do before launching your first website? Read on!
8 Things You Need To Know Before Launching Your First Website
1 | Review your website content
The first step along the way to launching your first website is to double- no, triple-check the content of your site.
Make sure that your entire site has been checked for spelling, grammatical errors, spacing, and alignment.
You want your website to be super impressive to the flood of followers you’ll be getting so you need to make sure your website content is impeccable!
Curious about copy? Check out this post covering the 7 dos and don’ts of DIYing your website copy and find out 5 Tips to Make Your Website Sound Like You.
2 | Review your call to actions
Two big things to remember in all of your CTA (call to action) buttons–they should be clear, and they should be minimal.
In fact, we recommend that your landing pages only have one.
This is to make sure that your potential clients know what to do once they get to your site–if you pitch them several different products, all with separate landing pages and buttons to click, they’re much less likely to click even one.
Check out these 6 landing page tips to explode business growth.
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3 | Make sure every form works
Whether your forms are to sign up potential clients for your email newsletter or onboarding them with a lead magnet, or even (especially) reaching out to contact you, you want to make sure these work, especially when you’re launching your first website.
Check them yourself with your email address, and ask several colleagues or friends to test them as well.
Check this out - @bluchic shares 8 things you MUST know before launching your first website!Click To Tweet4 | Optimize for SEO
Create page titles that establish a theme of your business and help you to be reached by searches for keywords related to your business.
Place phrases that describe your business mission on your site on an “About Us” page.
As long as your message is clearly stated on your site (bonus points for getting brand language in on multiple pages!) your potential clients should have a good chance of finding you through search.
Related post: WordPress SEO Basics to Help You Show Up More Online
5 | Hook up Google Analytics
This is super important when you’re just starting out: Google Analytics allows you to monitor all kinds of different metrics for user behaviors before, during, and after they spend time on your site.
Once you know how your customers find your site, and what they do when they get there, you can optimize your site and your marketing strategies even further.
Want to figure out what your audience wants to read? Check out this blog post.
6 | Test everything
Test, test, test, test. I cannot overstate this step.
Once you’ve asked everyone associated with your business to test your site for quality assurance (QA), ask a friend, family member, or someone else outside of your business to test the site and all of its CTAs and forms to make sure they work–a fresh set of eyes always helps.
There will always be something that pops up that you didn’t notice before, so please make sure to test everything!
This is a step many people skip when launching your first website, so don’t be one of those people!
Struggling with figuring out what platform to use for your website? Read this.
7 | Check on mobile devices for functionality
Think about how much you use your phone to browse different sites. I’d bet money that it’s quite often.
89% of mobile internet users go online daily on their phones. If you want people to stick around your website, you need it to be mobile optimized and functional.
8 | Market your new site
Finally, you’re ready for launch!
You’ve spell-checked, optimized each aspect of your site for clarity and searchability, and set up analytics.
Now, you’re ready to start marketing!
Some of the most effective marketing comes from building up your social media presence, sending out a message to your email list, and spreading the word through friends and family.
Final Thoughts
And just like that, you’re launching your first website!
If building a presence online is difficult for you, we invite you to sign up for our free dream website roadmap!
Also, if you haven’t decided on a theme for your website yet, be sure to check out our shop for a variety of options!
