The Cardinal Sin of a Web Site Launch

Sparkly new web sites are not the end of a development project. Unfortunately it's a fact that some companies put effort and money into the design and creation process, launch the site and then - Ta-da! - walk away.

If a web site falls in the internet and there's no one around, does it make a sound? This is not a paradox, the answer is "nope".

A web site, regardless of its role (brochure site, e-commerce, etc), is a company asset that needs promotion. Fortunately the steps to promote a web site are cost-effective, repeatable, and give almost immediate feedback. Here are a few of the big points:

1. Make sure your site is SEO optimized. Serving up content to search engines on a silver platter helps speed up the time a web site is crawled and parsed for keywords. Make sure your pages are content-rich and synchronized with the keywords users are searching for.
2. Launch your site with gusto. Email address books, Constant Contact databases, customer databases, Linked In, Facebook, Twitter. Any list of names accessible to a company should be farmed and used to announce a new web site. Make it fun, give your clients and customers a good reason to visit your brand new web site. People love to see new things.
3. Get on the lists. Make sure your web site starts to gain links in. Get listed in qualified directories, in blogs, in associate web sites. Anything to gain a reference and thus increase rankings with search engines.
4. Continually promote. A marketing budget, no matter what the size, represents the commitment to using a web site as part of a marketing program. Get your URL out there - print ads, pens, business cards, email signatures, AdWords campaigns. Promote your services or products though these means and promote your web site as the primary location to gain valuable information.

A new web site is an excellent time to contact your client base and gain new customers. New web sites invigorate a company internally and externally represent a companies' effort to continually evolve. Plus, everyone loves to see a successful launch.

03.16.2011. 10:53