After launch, your website needs to be carefully maintained to continue to function as it should. Don’t miss these four essential keys to effectively managing your website after launch.
Central Elements of Your website Management Plan
The document you create doesn’t have to be particularly elaborate. Even a simple Google doc that your entire team can access.
Think of it as an overarching task list that will support your website‘s success in the future. If you have a team working on your website, this can be a great way to give people an idea of your website‘s long-term vision while breaking it down into actionable daily or weekly tasks.
If your website has been live for some time, you can skip the first step. However, if your website is brand new, we recommend starting from scratch.
1. Clean Up Any Post Launch Tasks
Your website is online; now what? Launching a site can take a lot of energy and effort. Pat on your own on the back for getting this much. However, once the congratulatory period mores over, it’s time to get back to work.
Since launching a website is generally a very stressful time and you may have overlooked some critical areas, you must get them in order as soon as possible.
The following tasks would have been done in a suitable world before you launched your website, but if not, you should do them as soon as possible.
Check site Speed
A fast-loading website improves the overall experience for your users and helps you rank better in search engines. To get started, use a tool like GTMetrix, Google, Pagespeed Insights to see how your website performs. Make sure you have a schedule that includes regular checks to sure your performance doesn’t decline over time.
Double Check All images
Sometimes your images are the wrong size, or you have duplicate images on your website. Go through your website to make sure all the images you are using are the right ones. To further increase the speed of your website, you can utilize a tool like an Image Optimizer to compress your images before uploading them.
Do A Content Run-Through
If you’ve created your website in a hurry, your content may still contain errors that will deter your visitors. Essential things you should check include reviewing all of your content for spelling errors and misused words, making sure your content is appropriately optimized for search engines, and everything is formatted correctly.
It can be valuable to have another team member or outside professional go through your site for you. A fresh pair of eyes can often detect things that are easy to miss.
Multiple Screen Size Check
Do you know how your site looks on different devices? It’s hard to determine what screen size your visitors will use to access your website. For this reason, it needs to look and function well on a variety of screen sizes.
If you have multiple devices in your office, you should access your website and spend some time looking around to see how it works.
Go Through Forms and Sign-Up Pathways
You probably have multiple interaction paths on your website.
These include email signup forms, contact forms, buttons, navigation links, and anything else that requires visitor input to work.
Also, check your site for the dreaded 404 pages. Take the time to click through every active link on your site to make sure it points to the page you want.
Create and Submit Your XML sitemap
Your XML sitemap helps Google web crawlers see the structure of your website more easily. This file lists all the relevant URLs that you want to rank in Google. This is an essential aspect of maintaining and improving your onsite SEO.
2. Create and Execute Marketing Strategies
For your website or web application to be successful, you need a way to increase your traffic and customers. Your launch may have been a great success, but what will you do to keep that momentum going?
Fortunately, there are several online marketing methods you can choose from. We won’t go into each one individually but instead give you an overview of the channels you can potentially focus your efforts on.
When deciding which marketing method is best for your business, it’s essential to start with the critical question: Where is my audience spending time? By answering this question, you can plan how best to reach them using the methods listed below.
Social Media
Social Media is typically used to build a community of followers that you can then refer back to your website or use as social proof to increase conversion rates. Building a large following on Social Media takes time but can be a potent source of influence.
Content Marketing
Content Marketing is about offering value to your readers via onsite and offsite content. This usually takes the form of blogs, eBooks, special reports, and guest blogs.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is where you collect your visitors’ email addresses to provide them with value later and sell them your services. This method is usually used simultaneously with Content Marketing and other marketing methods like PPC.
Search Engine Optimization
At its core, SEO helps your website rank better in search engines for terms related to your business. These are keywords that your potential customers search for when looking for the problem or solution that your business offers.
The much more visible your website is in the search engines, the more visitors it will receive.
Pay Per Click
Pay-per-click involves placing ads on platforms like Google Adwords to drive traffic to your website or landing page. But before you engage in this type of advertising, you should properly optimize your website to make the most of the traffic you receive.
3. Continuous Improvement and Optimization
The website you launch is often very various from the one that serves your audience best. You may not have enough data or visitors to start optimizing your website right away. However, proper optimization is critical if you want a website that will allow your business to grow.
Else, how will you know which aspects of your website your audience finds best?
What Elements Should I Test?
Ideally, you’ll test every element of your website (over time), from the color of your links to the size of your font. However, we suggest starting with the four areas below, as they will have the most significant impact on your final result.
- Your headline
- Your CTA
- Your design
- Your displayed social proof
Tools for Testing
For website optimization, several free and paid tools will significantly help you in your efforts. For starters, you can use Google Content Experiments from the Google Analytics dashboard.
This free tool from Google allows you to run content experiments to optimize your website by optimizing small elements. The data gathered from these experiments will then allow you to make better design decisions.
4. General website Maintenance and Protection
Without a proper maintenance plan, there is an increased risk of your website breaking or becoming vulnerable to hacking. None of these problems are fun, and they can be easily avoided by following these steps.
Common Maintenance Protocols
To avoid unnecessary website headaches, keep track of your maintenance procedures and stick to a regular website maintenance program.
Regular website backups
The frequency of your backups will depend upon how often you update your site. When running a website backup make sure you store your backup in a secure location.
Ensure themes and plugins are up to date
If WordPress or a similar CMS powers your website, it is vulnerable if it is not updated. Often, all it takes is a couple of minutes to update your themes and plugins.
Do routine website tests
It’s essential to constantly monitor your website data by checking its performance, loading speed, and traffic.
Google Webmaster Tools will give you all sorts of valuable data and insight into your website‘s performance.
Website Security Measures
A secure website means that your site and the customer data you collect are always safe.
Complex passwords
The more complex your passwords are, the harder they are to guess. It would help if you also considered a policy of resetting passwords regularly.
Consider a firewall
Firewalls increase your security. They act as an additional barrier to protect your website from hackers and other malicious efforts.
Protect your admin directories
The admin and login areas of your website are particularly vulnerable. You can protect these areas by using the firewall mentioned above and installing plugins that limit the number of login attempts allowed.
A website management plan is a living document that allows you to track and control the development of your website. If you implement the above suggestions, you can ensure that your website will be successful in the future.
Read More: How to maintain website performance
I hope this article helped you understand 4 keys to Effectively Managing Your Website After Launch.
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