11 Steps You Need to Be Mindful of Before a Website Launch

A website launch is an important stage in establishing an online presence for a business.

In its implementation, this stage involves careful planning, an effective strategy, and a good understanding of the goals and target audience to be achieved.

So, what are the proper website launch steps?

Before getting to know how to launch a website more deeply, first understand what they mean in the following guide.

What Is a Website Launch?

A website launch is a way of launching a new website to the public. This process involves a series of steps and preparations that must be carried out before the website can be officially accessed by the public.

Generally, preparation to launch a website consists of creating a structure, implementing SEO, testing it, and promoting it to the target audience.

To do this, teamwork from various parties is needed, such as developers, designers, marketing teams, and business owners, to ensure that the website is ready for visitors.

How to Launch a Website

Website launch implementation involves a series of steps that you need to follow carefully. The following is a further explanation of each step:

1. Finding a Good Domain Name

The domain name is the residential address and website identity. The choice of name should not be done carelessly because it can affect the marketing aspects of the business.

Therefore, a good domain name should (be):

• Short and easy to spell
• Easy to remember
• Descriptive
• Contains brand names
• Have a ccTLD (country code top-level domain) like ".com" or “.org”

Also, don't forget to check the availability of the domain name and register it through a trusted domain service provider.

2. Choose a Reliable CMS

The next step in the website launch process is choosing a CMS (content management system). Make sure the CMS you choose has a good reputation for flexibility, reliability, and compatibility with website needs. That way, you can manage and create content easily.

There are two types of CMS that you can use, namely:

• Low-code or no-code CMS: This type of CMS does not require coding in its management. Therefore, it’s suitable for small businesses and professionals with limited budgets.
• Complex-code CMS: In contrast to low-code CMS, this type of CMS requires coding skills to operate.

3. Implement SEO

SEO can help search engines like Google determine website rankings on search pages.

Websites that optimize SEO can have good online visibility, so they can attract new visitors.

New visitors mean new potential customers. This means SEO opens up opportunities to increase your sales figures. SEO optimization on the website consists of three parts: on-page, off-page, and technical.

On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing website elements that are visible to users. To carry out this practice, there are several elements that you need to pay attention to, including:

• Title tag: This tag functions to help crawler bots understand the structure of website pages. Therefore, you must have a title tag in HTML that contains targeted keywords.
• Heading tag: The existence of heading tags on the website will help users navigate easily. At the same time, these tags can help search engines evaluate content during the crawling process.
• Content: In the creation process, content must be created for users first before SEO implementation. Not the other way around. That way, the resulting content can be informative, interesting, and useful for users. There are several tips when creating content, namely discussing topics comprehensively, bringing original opinions, keeping it short and easy to read, and including keywords in it.
• Meta description: This element will summarize the content on your website. That way, search engines can get a quick overview of its contents.
• Images: To optimize images for SEO, you can use high-quality compressed images to keep loading times low. In addition, images must have alt text containing keywords.

On the other hand, off-page SEO refers to the act of optimizing a website from the outside. These actions can include internal links, backlinks, and social media.

• Internal link: This element is a link that leads to another page on the same website. Using internal links can increase the authority of the linked page.
• Backlink: Like internal links, backlinks are also useful for increasing website authority. The difference is that this element has a link that points to another website.  
• Social media: You can use it for various website posts. Besides potentially increasing exposure, this action can also signal to search engines that the content being shared is valuable and worth reading.

The last part of implementing SEO on a website launch is technical. This section refers to optimizing websites and servers so that crawler bots can effectively crawl and index them.

When doing technical SEO, you need to pay attention to the following aspects:

• Website taxonomy: logical hierarchies can strengthen the relevance of website pages in search results.
• Categorization: grouping content into logical and structured categories so that visitors can find information easily. 
• User-friendly design and navigation: interesting design and intuitive navigation make it easier for visitors to explore the website.
• Loading speed: a website that loads quickly is very important because it can affect the user experience.
• robot.txt file: provide instructions to search engine bots about which parts of the website should be indexed or ignored.
• XML sitemap: helps search engines understand website structure and indexes important pages.
• Canonical url: avoids duplicate content by providing search engines with a clue to the original URL of the page.

4. Paying Attention to Website Design

In the website launch process, design has a major influence on the user experience. A well-designed and easy-to-navigate website can make it easier for users to find the information they need.

When creating a website design, you need to pay attention to the layout, colors, typography, and other design elements. That way, the resulting website design will be attractive, professional, and consistent with the brand identity.

Apart from that, you should also make sure that contact detail pages, service or product offers, and business information are easy for users to find.

5. Integrate with Analytics Platforms

Analytics platforms such as Google Analytics must be integrated with the website so you can see the performance of the content and website.

By using this platform, you can get information about:

• ROI digital marketing campaigns
• Content that audiences love
• User experience and behavior
• Device functionality

On the other hand, integration with analytics platforms can help you figure out the metrics you want to track.

There are several metrics that can help you see how successful your website launch is, including:

• Loading speed
• Bounce rate
• The number of pages a user reads per session
• Total number of visitors
• Traffic sources
• Keyword ranking
• Conversion rates

6. Make a Mobile Friendly Website

Currently, most users access the internet via mobile devices. Therefore, the website must be mobile-friendly so that it can be accessed easily.

You must create a website that is responsive and accessible via mobile devices by optimizing the layout, navigation, and content to fit different screen sizes.

After that, you can test the level of mobile friendliness of the website through tools, such as PageSpeed Insights and Page Speed Test from cmlabs. There are several aspects that need to be considered when conducting tests, namely:

• Content looks great on different devices
• Content format, spacing, and padding are rendered well
• Fast image loading
• Page scrolling works fine
• Responsive buttons, menus, and popups
• The website loads properly in various internet browsers

7. Check Website Security

Security level is another important thing to consider when launching a website. Apart from protecting the website from various hacking attacks, this can also increase its ranking on search engines.

This condition can occur because Google has a search ranking algorithm that takes website security into account.

To ensure a secure website, you can do the following things:

• Invest in an SSL certificate: Most URLs now start with HTTPS, where the "s" stands for "secure". Websites that have HTTPS URLs use SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates. This element functions to secure sensitive data and information.
• Use an anti-malware program: These programs keep website security under control by detecting and removing malware, running firewalls, patching security leaks, and much more.
• Running regular backups: Even if you have taken the previous steps, there is no guarantee that your website will be safe from hacking attacks. Therefore, you need to back up your website regularly to prepare for the worst-case scenario.

8. Optimizing Lead Generation

Another website launch stage is optimizing lead generation. This needs to be done to convert users into paying customers.

Typically, this action is performed using the contact form. The form will be placed in an easy-to-find area and use a CTA to encourage users to take certain actions. 

9. Conduct Usability Testing

This step needs to be done at the website launch stage to test various intuitive and easy-to-use website functions.

Usability testing will look at user interaction with the website and identify the problems or difficulties they encounter. Therefore, this test involves them providing feedback.

There are several things tested in usability testing, including:

• Learnability: How quickly users can make good use of the website
• Intuitiveness: How users perform certain actions without instructions
• Efficiency: How quickly and easily the user can perform certain actions after learning about the website
• Memorability: How well users can remember to perform certain actions after not using the website for a certain period of time
• Enjoyability: The user experience when navigating the website
• Bugs: Users go through various processes on the website and try to identify errors

10. Choose a Website Launch Time

The website launch is done after the previous steps have gone well. After that, you can choose a launch date, taking into account:

• Seasonal events: It's best to avoid website launches around major holidays unless your product or service is useful to consumers at this time.
• Day: On weekends, consumers usually relax and do recreational activities away from technology. Meanwhile, according to research, the best day for a website launch is Tuesday.
• Time zone: If you have a global business, it's important to consider the time zone of your audience—especially when you're a global business. Make sure the website launch doesn't happen at bedtime in your customer's time zone.

11. Promote the Website

After the launch, carry out promotions to increase visibility and bring in visitors. Choose a promotion channel that fits your target audience's demographics and preferences.

Thus, we've come to the last part of the guide to a website launch, complete with a discussion of what it means and how to do it.

One of the most important aspects of a website launch is optimizing SEO. This is because SEO can help websites have good visibility, traffic, and customer trust.

Therefore, after the launch, you need to develop a well-planned SEO strategy.

In its implementation, this strategy must be monitored and improved on a regular basis in order to provide maximum results.

You can use SEO services from cmlabs to define each SEO strategy more easily.

SEO services can help you develop a detailed and target-oriented marketing strategy to optimize your business's performance.