8 Things You Need Before Launching Your Website
Launching a website is not as simple as it was 10 years ago, perhaps. The web designing world has evolved over the years. This advancement can be easy for the visitors on your site but can make tasks more stressful for you. As a creator, a launch of your website needs to be steady. This means it’s well-planned so that you are aware of all the navigation you provide to your website visitors. Here are some simple tips to consider before you click that button to launch your site.
1. Branding Your Website
One of the most important things in building a brand is consistency. Entrepreneurs and influencers have long talked about focusing on a specific niche. Similarly, designing and navigating should also be broken down to a specific and consistent theme on your website. Make sure you have a strong and bold message that reflects your brand throughout your website.
2. Favicons and Logos
Along with branding comes creating favicons for your website. Favicons are as important as logos. Favicons are icons that appear on the browser tab when a user visits your website. They are associated with the URL of your site and can be easily established when you build your website. It should be an image that separates you from other sites.
3. Content on the Site
Whether you are launching a website for your online store or a personal blog, you should have enough content before your start. Just having a meager amount on your site is not enough to start with. Most sites are successful when you have planned content to post for at least three months.
4. Review and Edit
Among the many things that can go wrong, one of them is bad content. Bad content includes textual mistakes as simple as a typo. Grammatical mistakes can be a major reason for people to click that close button on your site. Make sure you proofread and spell-check all your content before you think it is all ready-to-go.
5. Functionality
Have you ever revisited a site that had broken links and no menu? Probably not. Your site needs to have that smooth functionality that allows your visitor to just focus on your content or products. If your site is running too slow or if some links are not easy to locate then you’re definitely going to lose traffic. Make sure you optimize the speed of all the internal links you provide. In other words, the user should not have to worry or stress about navigating through your site.
6. SEO Strategy for Your Website
SEO, search engine optimization, is considered when you want to improve traffic and sales on your website. Every ambitious entrepreneur wants that. Along with checking functionality and improving the interface, you need to make sure your site will pop-up in various searches on other search engines and platforms like Google.
If you are rebuilding an old website and changing the URL, make sure you know about the 301 Redirect. This will help your visitors go to the right place, which is your site.
WordPress users have the advantage of using Yoast SEO, which guides them to post content that attracts most traffic.
7. The User Experience Checklist
User Experience, a.k.a UX, can be easily undermined. Consider some of these basic things can help you diversify your website’s audience.
People may visit your websites using different browsers and devices. All the graphics and media that you include in your website’s layout should be accessible and presentable on all devices. Website layouts for tablets and phones are often askew on new websites and you don’t want that for yours.
8. Secure Your Website
Websites that are not secure have a firewall page from the browser saying “Not Secure.” This can drive people away from your site and will only bring less traffic and lack of sales. To make sure that people are able to visit your website without any hurdles, you should look into an SSL certificate.
A SSL certificate, also known as the digital certificate, ensures the user that they are not entering a fake website. It also makes sure that any information they share or transmit on the site is encrypted. This is very important for entrepreneurs who are launching a website for their online shop.
Set the website’s launch date!
After you have considered all of these points, all you need to do is set a launch date. The whole process of website designing until the launch can be tedious but it doesn’t have to be stressful if you have a checklist at hand. Just take a deep breath and hit that launch button.
Feature photo by Domenico Loia on Unsplash
