You receive the link from your website developer of the final revision of your website. You’re excited as you open the email and click the page. You’re amazed at the design and it suits all your needs perfectly… you can barely contain yourself.

“Thank you! It’s amazing! I love it.”

And then, two hours later… you’re lost.

What’s next?

Sometimes when we accomplish something in business… it kind of kills the spirit of it.

That’s why we need to set new goals and targets for ourselves to stay engaged and continue to grow.

This applies to your website.

The truth is…

When you launch your website, that’s only the first part.

Now you need a step-by-step guide on pushing the website to it’s limits and planning for long-term updates.

Step One: Content, Content, Content

Your website is simply a website.

Now it’s time to say what you want to say.

When you develop content for your website, you may want to think about:

Customer orientation (vs company-orientated writing)
Be concise
Use a call-to-action
Benefits of your service (vs features)

Read our blog on ’11 simple tips for making your content better’ for more ideas to improve the content on your website.

The fact remains, your content is the only thing that separates you from the competition.

And you should continue to develop new content for the website after launch, to continue to keep it updated.

Step Two: Run Tests

Here are the things you can do to test your website, at the basic level:

Content forms
Website speed test
User feedback

Look at the user experience.

Can people easily navigation to your content?

Do are the links work correctly on the website?

How does it look on the mobile? Though if that wasn’t handled with your initial website design, that’s an issue.

Test the website, make sure it works, there may be some errors that were missed.

Step Three: Optimising For Search Engines

Now you need to optimise for search engines.

There are some basic things you can do:

Mobile responsive website (mobile is important for SEO)
Friendly URLs (keep page and content links short and simple)
Install Google Console
Optimize content (header titles, keywords)
Site-speed is important (reduce size of images, etc)

Search engine optimisation is so complex that we could not possibly give you all the answers.

The best thing to consider is:

Will people see my page on Google when they search for my business?
How will my site look when shared across social media?
What does a basic Google search on brand my show?

And for a more complicated search engine strategy, it may be best to consult a specialist.

They will put together a strategy that includes:

Customer definition
Keyword research
On-page optimisation
Content plan

Tracking the success of your search engine campaign can require expertise and resources that is only usually found in a digital marketing agency.

Step Four: Plan For Management

What do you need to manage your website long-term?

The basics of updating your website will include:

Case studies of new work
Relevant content that engages your audience
Photographs in your website gallery
Blog on recent business expansion

That’s just some of the most simple suggestions.

You may also want to add new landing pages to support advertisement campaigns, change content to suit the needs of your business.

No matter what, you’ll need to consider the resources and tools you will need to manage your website for the long-term.

Step Five: Local Listings & Social Media

Now you’re all live.

You’ve got your plan to manage your website long-term.

You’ve optimised your website, proofread the content and got all the final touches.

Now it’s really time to get excited.

The first thing most business owners want to do?

Announce their new website on social media!

It’s a good move, and we recommend it.

There’s also some other places you may want to update your listing to include your ‘website url’ on your profile:

Google My Business
Yell/Local Listings
Industry-Specific Listings (Check-a-trade/MyBuilder/RatedPeople)

Any place you list your business, update your profile to include your website.

Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and other social media platforms included.

They are high-authority websites that will assist in your Google rankings… and will allow your customers to easily find out more about your business.

You may also want to consider putting a plan together to your social media followers to your website.

Step Six: Consider Further Advertising

Social media is a great place to start (and continue) advertising to your audience.

It’s a great tool as your customers are on the platforms, already engaged with your content.

As a business owner, you may also be wondering… how do I get more customers to my website?

We all know that you can advertise on Facebook.

When it comes to your website, you have two options:

Organic or paid.

Paid:

That is pay-per-click advertising, which requires you to pay monthly for immediate traffic to your website.

The largest network and most common is Google Adwords, which had over £100 billion in revenue in 2019.

Organic:

Organic is the reach your website has on search results, through social media engagement.

A content marketing is based keyword research, creating high-quality content to gain authority in that space.

Step Seven: Tracking & Analytics

Setting up Google Analytics is a simple task.

It may be easy to find out some simple statistics:

How many people visit my website?
Where do people find my website?
How much time do people spend on my website?
Where do people leave my website?

What do you do with that information?

How can you improve on the engagement on your website?

When you have your Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel installed, this opens up a lot of new options, including:

Provide a reliable way to measure your return on investment with your advertisement campaigns (PPC)
Retargeting your audience (advertising directly to people who have visited your website on Facebook/Google)
Continue to develop content that your audience is engaged with in the most, according to the data from your analytics

It doesn’t have to be confusing.

But there are some questions you may want to ask, once you take your business online.